


Readjustment

by Elspethdixon, Seanchai



Series: Resurrection-verse [2]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Civil War (Marvel), Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-10
Updated: 2007-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elspethdixon/pseuds/Elspethdixon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seanchai/pseuds/Seanchai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to Resurrection, Reconstruction, and Redemption. The various Avengers head to Washington to deal with Registration, and end up having to deal with each other. Meanwhile, Steve continues adjusting to life, Tony continues to have Issues, and they get used to the whole relationship thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work.
> 
> Again, our thanks to harmonyangel and tavella for the great beta job.

The remnants of last night's red and blue streamers were still scattered around the officers' mess, drooping limply off the edges of the tables. The room itself was mostly deserted, save for Peter and MJ, who were sitting opposite Steve at the table nearest the door.  
  
It was nearly nine-thirty, and SHIELD's abbreviated officer corps had already eaten and gone, as had the other superheroes -- except for Tony, who had still been asleep when Steve had left their room. Steve had had to disentangle himself from his arms before getting up, and even that hadn't woken him; Tony had simply transferred his grasp to Steve's pillow.  
  
Peter was out of costume, his hair sticking up every which way. He poked discontentedly at his eggs. "These taste like plastic packing foam."  
  
MJ speared a piece of his egg on the end of her fork, ate it, and made a face. "I think it  _is_  plastic packing foam."  
  
Steve was not going to ask why MJ knew what plastic packing foam tasted like. Having long familiarity with military-issue powered eggs, he'd bypassed them completely in favor of oatmeal. Oatmeal was supposed to be tasteless.  
  
The coffee was good, though. It was neither stale, nor burned, nor cold, which made it unusual for SHIELD coffee. "Where did this come from?" Steve hefted his coffee mug. "There wasn't any last night." Tony had spent half the evening sitting quietly at his side and rubbing at the bridge of his nose, suffering from deserved caffeine withdrawal. Even knowing that he'd had it coming, Steve had felt faintly bad about that; Tony was in shaky enough physical shape -- bruised, battered, and worn out from whatever the Extremis had done to him. He didn't need extra headaches on top of it all.  
  
Peter shrugged, still poking at his eggs. "Director Fury sent some guys ashore to get it."  
  
People were already calling Nick "Director Fury" again, as if Tony had never been in charge of SHIELD. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign, or a bad one.  
  
"He gets cranky when he doesn't have coffee," Steve said.  
  
"How can you tell?" MJ asked.  
  
Footsteps sounded in the doorway behind Steve. Peter wrinkled his nose, and Steve glanced over his shoulder to see Tony standing a few feet away, white dress shirt untucked and hair disheveled.  
  
Without looking at Peter and MJ, Tony silently walked to the table and sat down beside Steve, close enough that their arms were touching.  
  
"Good morning," Steve said, amused.  
  
Tony looked as if he were still half-asleep and blinked at him, eyes barely focused. "I woke up and you were gone," he said faintly.  
  
"Ookay, too much information," Peter said.  
  
Steve's mug was still half-full. He handed it to Tony, who took it and cradled it in both hands. "Have some coffee," Steve told him.  
  
Tony buried his face in the coffee mug, silent again.  
  
"I'd say that was creepy and zombie-like," Peter started, "if it weren't... Wait, it is zombie like. Nice to see some things haven't changed." He ate another forkful of powdered eggs, averting his eyes from Tony's slumped figure.  
  
Tony ignored this remark; Steve wasn't sure he'd even really heard it, or if he'd have said anything if he had. Tony had slept for almost twelve hours -- nearly eighteen, if you counted his crashing after Steve arrived on the Helicarrier -- and yet he still seemed exhausted.  
  
Peter sighed, setting down his fork. "These are really, really bad. The food last night wasn't this bad."  
  
Steve succumbed to curiosity, and reached across the table with his fork to steal a bite of Peter's eggs. "Actually, they're not as rubbery as I thought they'd be. Powdered eggs have improved since 1945."  
  
"Yeah, and I bet you had to walk uphill through the snow to get to the battlefield, too."  
  
"Only at the Battle of the Bulge," Steve said, keeping his voice completely deadpan.  
  
"Damn," Peter said, as MJ and Tony snickered.  
  
"Just think," Tony offered, still staring intently down at his coffee mug, "if it were Valley Forge, you could have done it without shoes."  
  
Steve grinned. The magic of coffee; Tony could now speak coherently and understand human speech. And for what might have been the first time, he was relaxed enough around one of the anti-registration heroes to actually make a joke, albeit one at Steve's expense.  
  
MJ made a soft, half-laughing noise, and set down her spoon, pushing her empty cereal bowl away. "And if you were a Gaul fighting Caesar, you'd have had to fight naked. Also in the snow. And think about how much that would suck."  
  
"It wasn't that funny," Peter said. He glanced at Tony for second, then looked away. "Okay, um... We'll just let you guys eat breakfast. Because mine is gross, and, um, yeah." He stood up, picking up his plate, and started for the conveyer belt that took empty dishes back to the kitchen.  
  
MJ shrugged, and followed him, shaking her head.  
  
Tony watched them go, a pained look in his eyes. The bad guys had been dealt with, the Registration Act was on its way out, yet Peter still couldn't sit down at a table with Tony. Tony had practically adopted Peter as a little brother back before everything had gone to hell; the obvious awkwardness between them now had to hurt.  
  
"You know, this re-uniting the superhero community thing really would be much easier if I wasn't part of the equation."  
  
"You promised I wouldn't have to do this by myself," Steve reminded him. Regardless of what Tony thought of himself, it wouldn't work without him. And Steve wasn't willing to contemplate doing it without Tony at his side.  
  
Tony smiled ruefully. "Doing it by yourself might be easier. There are a lot of people who are still angry with me, and with good reason."  
  
The line between the pro- and anti-registration sides would stay just as sharply defined as ever if Tony and the other pro-registration people didn't work with them to repair registration.  
  
Tony and his side hadn't been quite as misguided as Steve had thought; he'd made some mistakes of his own, and he knew that he was partially responsible for the depth of that division, and he wanted to be able to make that right. Otherwise, Luke and Peter and the others would just stay angry, and the superheroes would never really be able to work together again.  
  
More importantly, if the anti-registration heroes never came back into the fold, their voices wouldn't be heard, and they'd never truly be able to fix the mess the SHRA had gotten them into. If Doom, Red Skull, and the Mandarin had shown them anything, it was that they couldn't afford to stay divided. A house divided against itself could not stand.  
  
"Trust me," he said. "It wouldn't be."  


 

* * *

 

  
"You!" Maya whirled on him, pointing an accusing finger at the center of his chest.   
  
Tony froze in the engineering lab's doorway, as Maya went on, "You're the one who told Dugan to toss the Mandarin's rings into the ocean. I can't believe you, Tony." She threw up her hands, disgust on her scarred face. "Think of what we could have learned from them!"   
  
Very little that was worth learning, if what the Mandarin had done with them over the past decade was anything to go by. "They were too dangerous," Tony defended, walking over to one of the workbenches. Schematics for the SHIELD satellite system were laid out across it, Sal's messy scrawl decorating the margins. Like Tony, Sal liked having something concrete to work with. Maya, left to her own devices, would have planned out the overhaul of the satellites solely with computer models. "You're re-routing the signals. You think that and a frequency change will be enough?"   
  
"Don't try to change the subject. What kind of a scientist are you?" She glared at him, arms folded across her chest.   
  
Tony leaned his hip against the side of the workbench and wrapped his arms around his ribs. The bruises the Mandarin's force ring had left all over his torso were nice and purple now, and standing up straight made his ribs ache. "One who's learned that some things aren't meant to be played with." Which, unfortunately, was not something Maya was ever going to learn. If the disaster that the first Extremis test had devolved into hadn't shown her that, nothing would. "They weren't compatible with human technology," he went on, giving her a reason she could understand. "Try to hook them up to a computer, and all you'd do would be to fry its mainframe."   
  
Maya raised her eyebrows. "You sound awfully certain for a man who had them thrown into the San Marinas trench before you had a chance to take a look at them."   
  
"I did more than look," Tony told her. "I accessed them with the Extremis during the fight, and I haven't been able to use it since. The most sophisticated piece of computer programming on the planet, and they fried it dead." The pain had been like nothing he'd ever felt, like the rings were searing his body to ash from the inside out. No wonder the Mandarin was insane; he'd bonded those things to his nervous system.   
  
Tony had been linked to one of them for less than a minute, and his head still ached dully; the part of his mind that should have been filled with data streams and digital information flared with pain anytime he tried to access anything other than his armor, like an ice pick being jammed into his temples.   
  
Maya stared at him. "That's not possible," she said flatly. "If the Extremis were dead, you'd be dead."   
  
"Well, not dead, dead," he clarified. "It's still there, I just can't use it without blacking out. The connections are burned out." And he could learn to live with that, he could. He still had the armor, and he'd gotten by just fine before he had the new powers. But if he had to live with this headache for the rest of his life, it was going to drive him back to drinking. Or, well, not quite that, because as long as he had Steve, nothing was bad enough to warrant that, but he'd end up buying stock in aspirin.   
  
"Burned out," Maya repeated. "Do you know what happens to telepaths when they burn themselves out?" When he shook his head, she went on, "We studied it, when we were designing the Extremis. Their powers are still there, they just can't access them because the neurons they need for it are damaged. And for a normal person, that can take years to heal. For you, it will probably take about a month."   
  
Tony blinked. "It's going to come back?"   
  
"Maybe." She shrugged. "I'd have to do an MRI to be sure. What happens why you try to use it?"   
  
"Blinding, excruciating pain happens. And I've been getting nosebleeds. Anytime I try to access anything other than the armor."   
  
Maya nodded. "And did this start when you accessed the rings, or during the two weeks you were using the Extremis continually? Initial simulations predicted that it would over-stress the human body if used non-stop for an extended period of time."   
  
"It started after the first week," he admitted. "But it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. It didn't get really bad until the rings. Which is why I'm here."   
  
She frowned, the scar pulling tight across her cheekbone. "I don't think you burned yourself out, not if the armor still works. It sounds like you over-stressed the connections, and what you did with the rings was just the final straw. The Extremis is a biological technology, it's part of your body, and you strained it, like an athlete with a stress fracture. Now you're just going to have to wait for it to heal."   
  
"I can't completely shut it down, though. It flares up whenever I'm around electronics, and since working with electronics is my job..." he trailed off, waving his hand, and then flinched as his bruised right shoulder protested. The Extremis wasn't the only thing that was going to be inconvenient for the near future.   
  
"Pain is your body's way of telling you not to be an idiot. Take some Advil and do your best not to use it. You'll never heal otherwise. You should really let me do an MRI."   
  
"Right," Tony said. He resisted the urge to rub at his shoulder. Or his temples; talking about the headache had made it worse, though he knew that was just psychosomatic. "I don't have time for that. I'm going back to Stark Tower today, since I need to check on the company and get ready to go talk to Congress, and there's only about eighty percent as many electronic security devices there." And Steve was coming back with him. He hadn't been sure Steve would want to, despite the promises they'd both made; it would take months to rebuild the Avengers Mansion, and there was nowhere else for Tony to go, but Steve would have been more than welcome with the New Avengers. And his apartment in Brooklyn was still there; it had been left to Tony, with instructions to give it to James Barnes. Tony hadn't been able to bring himself to go and look at it, so it would be exactly the way Steve had left it. But when he'd mentioned that he needed to return to Stark Tower, Steve had just nodded and asked when they were leaving.   
  
It still didn't seem entirely real.   
  
Maya shrugged. "Fine. It's your central nervous system."   
  
"Tony?" Steve's voice.   
  
Tony turned to see him standing just inside the doorway, eyeing Maya a little suspiciously. He had his artist's portfolio slung over one shoulder, and was wearing one of Tony's shirts again; all of the clothing he'd bought while they were lying low in the city had blown up with Sharon's flying car. The t-shirt looked much better on Steve than it ever had on Tony, fabric stretched tight across the muscles of his chest. "Did you get what you need?" Steve asked. "The ferry to the mainland is leaving."   
  
"If I had that to go home to," Maya said, sotto vocce, "I'd want to go back to Stark Tower, too."   
  
Tony grinned at Steve, who was now blushing and rubbing at the back of his neck, not looking at Maya. "Yes," he said. "I have everything I need."   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
The lobby of Stark Tower was full of scaffolding and marble dust. Half of the stone floor had been pulled up, exposing the concrete underneath, and the remaining flagstones were covered in blackened scorch marks.  
  
"What happened here?" Steve asked, staring around at the chaos.  
  
Tony shrugged, looking vaguely guilty. "The Mandarin. It was supposed to distract me while he took down the Helicarrier. It worked."  
  
"From what Dugan told me, there wasn't much you could have done." Steve adjusted the strap of his artist's portfolio and nudged Tony towards the elevators. Thank God the damage hadn't included them; the last thing Tony needed at this point was to hike up fifty flights of stairs.  
  
"I could have gotten there faster." Tony punched in the key code for the tower's penthouse, eyes focused on the buttons he was pressing. "I was so close; only a few dozen yards and I could have-"  
  
"Exploded?" Steve interrupted.  
  
Tony glared at him. "De-activated one of the bombs. We might not have lost the whole carrier, then."  
  
From what Steve had heard, and from the grainy cell-phone camera footage of the explosion Fox News had shown on repeat for the entire next day, the only difference a few more yards would have made was that Tony might have succeeded in getting himself blown up after all. "It feels like it's been years since I was here," he said, changing the subject. He didn't want to think about Tony's attempts to get himself killed right now.  
  
Tony looked away, shrugging uncomfortably. "You didn't have to come back," he said. "Thank you."  
  
Steve stared at Tony for a second, before carefully pointing out, "You're here. Where else would I have gone?"  
  
Tony gave him a little smile, eyes bright. Even though the dark circles under them were still evident, he suddenly looked a lot less tired.  
  
The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Steve rested a hand on the small of Tony's back for a moment as they stepped into the apartment's entryway.  
  
"You!"  
  
Steve looked up, grabbing for the portfolio -- he could throw it with the shield inside it, if necessary -- to see Spiderman crouching upside-down on the ceiling, back in his red and blue costume. "Peter? What are you-"  
  
Peter dropped to the floor, pointing an accusing finger at Tony. "What have you done with my aunt?" he demanded.  
  
Tony stared at Peter blankly, looking pole axed. Steve understood the feeling; Peter had left the Helicarrier at the same time they had, heading for Strange's place. What was he doing here?  
  
"Your aunt?" Tony repeated, still staring at Peter.  
  
"MJ and I went to the hospital, and she was gone!" Peter was about two feet away from Tony now, jabbing a finger under his nose. "Somebody picked her up in one of your cars. What did you do with her?"  
  
"Nothing," Tony protested. "I don't know where she is!" He took a step back, out of range of Peter's expansive hand gestures. "That was part of the arrangement; I just gave Jarvis the money for the hospital bills, and he didn't tell me where he was spending it, so that when the police showed up looking for you, I could legitimately say I had no idea where you were."  
  
"That was your money?" Peter cocked his head to one side, righteous outrage temporarily derailed.  
  
"No," Tony said. "Jarvis embezzled it behind my back."  
  
Steve looked from one of them to the other. He had a feeling that he was missing about half of this conversation. The last he'd heard, May Parker had been in the coma ward at St. Vincent's, after being shot by the Kingpin's men. "Are you sure it wasn't Fisk, trying to finish what he started?"  
  
Peter went stiff. "Oh God, I hadn't thought of that."  
  
"If he has, he's probably holding her hostage," Tony said. He took a step towards Peter, reaching out as if to touch him on the shoulder, then stopped, letting his hand fall to his side. "I can connect to SHIELD's satellite network and find her with-" he broke off, as Steve and Peter stared at him. "Or, wait, I suppose I can't right now. I'm sorry, Peter. I'll have SHIELD start looking."  
  
That was right; Tony could use the Extremis to track people via satellite. Or had been able to until yesterday, anyway. In retrospect, it was incredibly convenient that he'd never been able to use that ability to find any of the hiding places Steve had used during the fighting over Registration.  
  
"There's no need to do that, sir." Jarvis stepped out into the hallway, impeccably dressed as usual. May Parker followed just behind him, leaning on a cane.  
  
"Aunt May!" Peter cried, throwing himself at her, only to bring himself up short and hug her carefully. "You're awake!"  
  
Steve grinned, relieved, and not just on Peter's behalf. He liked May; it was good to see her awake and unkidnapped. It was even better to see Jarvis.  
  
"Jarvis," Steve said, still grinning. He crossed the room in two long steps and seized Jarvis in a hug. "It's great to see you again."  
  
Jarvis patted him on the back and then stepped away, straightening his jacket. "Sir," he said, "it's very good to see you as well." Which, from Jarvis, was unbridled enthusiasm. "I'll have your things brought out of storage, shall I?"  
  
He had things? Steve had assumed that all he owned in the world at the moment was his shield; even the clothes on his back were borrowed from Tony and Nick Fury. He grinned. "Put them in Tony's room."  
  
Jarvis raised an eyebrow. "Are congratulations in order?"  
  
Steve knew he was blushing, and tried to think of something to say. Jarvis had practically raised Tony; it was good to have his approval. There were a lot of people who weren't going to approve, either because of Tony's role in Registration, or because they were both men.  
  
"Edwin," May chided. She extricated herself from Peter's grasp and took Steve by the hand. "It's good to see you well." She smiled up at him, the expression slightly evil and very familiar. Steve suddenly knew where Peter had gotten it from. "And congratulations, Steven."  
  
Tony's expression was priceless. Steve wasn't sure if it was embarrassment at the fact that they were all standing around commenting on his love life, or mild outrage at the fact that everyone was acting as if Steve had just brought home a blushing bride. Or possibly it was just that people were being nice to him, and he didn't know how to respond to that anymore.  
  
"Wait, why are you awake?" Peter asked, completely ignoring Steve and Tony. "How long have you been awake? Why are you  _here?"_  
  
"Nearly two weeks. When I regained consciousness, you and Mary Jane were nowhere to be found, and since the hospital seemed to be under the impression that my last name was still Riley, I thought it might be better not to have them try and contact you."  
  
"Um, about that," Peter began.  
  
"So I called Edwin," May went on, "and he apprised me of the situation and brought me here."  
  
The elevator dinged again, and the doors opened to reveal MJ, who flung herself at Peter while the doors were still moving. "Peter! The hospital said that she woke up and Edwin Jarvis took her -- oh. May! You're here!"  
  
"Yes. I'm here."  
  
MJ let go of Peter and went to hug May, turning to glare at her husband. "I told you to wait for me. You ran off before I could finish talking to the doctor, who knows you're Spiderman, by the way." She paused for breath, then, "and how did you get up here? The doorman said he hadn't seen you."  
  
Peter managed to look embarrassed despite the fact that his mask was hiding his entire face. "Through a window."  
  
Tony sighed. "Which one did you break?"  
  
"You have a lot of windows."  
  
Tony held up a hand. "I just want to know so that I can get the repair crew downstairs to come up and see to it before three."  
  
"Why?" MJ asked. "What happens at three?"  
  
"They go home," Jarvis told her, sounding as if he found this mildly offensive. "I recommended that we not hire this contracting firm again."  
  
"I won't," Tony said. He frowned, and reached up to rub at the bridge of his nose, a gesture Steve was beginning to find far too familiar. "I've had to remind them that the columns in the lobby are load bearing three times."  
  
"Perhaps we could all go sit down somewhere?" Steve suggested, watching Tony, who had closed his eyes.  
  
"Ah yes." Jarvis gestured in the direction of the kitchen. "I just put on a pot of tea."  
  
The kitchen was exactly as Steve remembered it, except that his sketch of the Manhattan skyline, which had once hung on the far wall, was gone. Also, there was a small, orange kitten sitting in a basket on the breakfast counter.  
  
Tony stared at the kitten, which stared back at them all with huge, blue eyes. "What," he said, "is that?"  
  
"A kitten," May said, taking a seat at the table. "There was a homeless man outside of the hospital who was trying to find a home for it, as he couldn't take care of it himself, so Edwin decided to take it in."  
  
Peter, who seemed to have forgotten his distrust of anything to do with Tony in the face of small, fluffy animals, scooped the kitten up and cuddled it. The kitten yowled, and attempted to claw his face off. "Aw!" Peter cooed, holding the growling cat at arm's length. "He's all scruffy and psychotic and doesn't trust anyone. You should call him Matt! I mean, Daredevil. You should call him Daredevil."  
  
Steve rescued the kitten from Peter, holding it on one palm. The kitten regarded him with disdain. "It's very small, but it still manages to look down its nose at you. You could call it Patton."  
  
"Who said we were keeping it?" Tony asked.  
  
Everyone ignored him. "I was thinking of Churchill," Jarvis said.  
  
Steve smiled. The kitten was now attempting to eat his fingers, its teeth needle-like. He put it carefully down on the counter. "That would also work."  
  
Tony poked the kitten with one finger. "It's a very small cat," he said doubtfully. The kitten closed its eyes and rolled over onto its back, purring blissfully.  
  
"It's a kitten," May told him. "It will grow."  
  
"It likes you," Peter said, tone accusing. "Why does it like you?"  
  
MJ reached down and scratched the kitten under the chin. It gave a wriggle of feline pleasure.  
  
Peter reached for it tentatively, and the kitten sprang to its feet, growling, its blue eyes narrowed to slits.  
  
"I think it thinks you're a giant spider," MJ offered helpfully. She turned to Jarvis. "You could call it Logan."  
  
"Churchill," Jarvis said, "leave Spiderman alone."  
  
Peter abandoned the cat and went to stand in front of May's chair. "I'm so, so glad you're okay," he said. "I was worried that, um... I was worried." He looked away, scratching at the back of his head, then said, apologetically, "I'd say you could come home with us now, but, um, we're kind of staying with Dr. Strange until we can get things worked out."  
  
"Don't worry, dear," May said. She smiled up at Peter serenely. "I'll be staying with Edwin for the time being."  
  
Steve missed whatever Peter's reaction to this announcement was. Tony had shifted his weight slightly, wrapping one arm around his injured side. Steve pushed him gently in the direction of one of the chairs. "Sit down."  
  
Tony stood his ground. "I'm fine."  
  
"You passed out on me yesterday." It was an exaggeration, but only a slight one. Steve had half-carried Tony from the infirmary to their room. His own stitches, which he'd obtained at the same time that Tony had gotten the sling that he wasn't wearing, were itching furiously now, and he resisted the urge to scratch at his forehead. "And you're still favoring your right arm."  
  
May extended her cane to Tony. "You look as if you need this more than I do. What happened to you?"  
  
"He was electrocuted yesterday," Peter said, voice deliberately cheerful, the way it was when he wanted to lighten the mood. "Also, the Mandarin punched him a lot."  
  
"I conducted electrical energy through my armor to overload the Mandarin's rings," Tony corrected him. "I didn't have any other options."  
  
Other options or not, Tony was pale, and there was a tight look around his eyes and mouth that Steve knew from long experience meant that he was in pain. Also from long experience, he knew that Tony wouldn't do anything about it while other people were watching.  
  
"We have to get an early start for Washington tomorrow," Steve announced, "and anyway, I'm sure you four have a lot to talk about. I'll see you in the morning, May. Jarvis," he nodded at the man, "it's good to be home."  
  
He left the room then, Tony following on his heels, as Steve had known that he would.  
  
Tony's room had a distinctly un-lived-in look, as if its owner had been gone for far more than a fortnight. The bed looked completely unslept in, and Steve suspected that this was not simply due to Jarvis's housekeeping. He felt a moment's gratitude that it was a queen-sized bed and not a double; Steve was too tall for most double beds. Actually, come to think of it, the choice made sense; Tony was almost as tall as he was.  
  
"What was that about, Steve?" Tony turned to him, one eyebrow raised. "It's two o'clock."  
  
Steve grinned, knowing the expression probably looked slightly sheepish. "I know. I just wanted to get you alone."  
  
"We've been alone for two weeks," Tony pointed out.  
  
"I know," Steve said again. And during those two weeks, there had been times when he would have killed for fifteen minutes conversation with someone who wasn't entirely wrapped up in the Extremis. He was almost relieved that Tony couldn't access it at the moment, now that he knew for a fact that it could hurt him.  
  
With anyone else, two weeks of enforced solitary proximity would have driven Steve crazy. With Tony, it had been almost pleasant, or would have been if they hadn't had to dodge supervillains the whole time.  
  
Steve took a step closer to Tony. "What, are you tired of my company already?" he asked teasingly.  
  
Tony regarded him seriously, his expression not teasing at all. "Never."  
  
Steve understood what Tony meant by that, but he was tired of being serious. The past forty-eight hours had been one emotional conversation after another, and they could both use a break from that. Tony, at least, hadn't had any downtime since their reunion, unless hours spent unconscious counted, and they were going to have to jump right back into the fray tomorrow.  
  
He really wasn't looking forward to DC. The people he and the other Avengers would be talking to wouldn't have changed their opinions; they'd just be pretending that they had, to distance themselves from Dickstein and the House Unregistered Superhuman Activities Committee, and from a politically embarrassing scandal. They would apologize, and backpedal, and tell Steve how happy they were that he was alive, all while doing everything that they could to salvage the remnants of Registration, and he would have to pretend to believe them.  
  
Thank God he would at least have Tony at his side. He'd been prepared to face off against the full might of politics and the law on his own before Red Skull had intervened, but that didn't mean he hadn't been dreading it.  
  
Doom and the Mandarin had been taken down, Red Skull was dead (permanently this time, Steve hoped), and at this point, he deserved a few peaceful hours with Tony, some time that was just for them.  
  
"Good," he said, and took another step forward, until he was close enough to Tony to feel the heat coming off his body.  
  
Tony leaned towards him slightly, giving him a lidded smile, and Steve placed both hands on Tony's shoulders and pushed him down gently until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. "Take off your shirt and let me look at your ribs. Or are you going to pretend they don't hurt?"  
  
Tony glared at him, unbuttoning his shirt. "This is pointless. There's nothing you can do right now; they're already wrapped."  
  
Steve sat beside him, the edge of the bed dipping under their combined weight. "I know. This was really just a clever ploy to get you to take your shirt off."  
  
"There are easier ways to do that." Tony grinned, visibly more relaxed now that it was just the two of them.  
  
Steve leaned forward and kissed him, sliding one hand inside Tony's open shirt and running his palm carefully up Tony's bandaged ribs.  
  
Tony tilted his head to one side, and put a hand on Steve's knee, sliding it up his thigh.  
  
The door creaked open. The two of them sprang apart; Steve snapping his head around to face whomever was about to walk in on them.  
  
The orange kitten sauntered into the room, tail waving behind it like a banner, waddling slightly on its still-short kitten legs.  
  
Tony stared at the kitten, expression flat. "You know, last time I checked," he said conversationally, "I was sure this was my house."  
  
Steve laughed, the momentary tension draining out of his muscles. "I always thought it was Jarvis's."  
  
Tony grinned, teeth white against the black of his goatee, and shook his head. "You're probably right," he said, leaning in against Steve's side. "Welcome back."  
  
Steve slid an arm around Tony's back, just enjoying the closeness for a moment. "It's good to be home." The Avengers Mansion would always be what he really thought of as home, but Stark Tower had Tony, and that would do for now.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Technically speaking, SHIELD did not fall under the aegis of the Secretary of Defense. Tony knew that from personal experience, having once  _been_  Secretary of Defense. Of course, he'd never been stupid enough to try and make Nick Fury do anything, so he'd never had the need to test that.   
  
So, really, Jack Kooning didn't have the authority to summon Tony to a secret meeting on an hour's notice. Circumstances being what they were, however, Tony didn't really have the option of saying "no."   
  
"A car will arrive at the Washington Court Hotel at nine-hundred hours to pick you up," Kooning had said. He'd called Tony mere minutes after Carol had landed them at Regan National Airport; Tony had been walking toward the rental car counter when his cell had rung. "Just you, Stark. And leave the briefcase at home."   
  
Thank God Steve had still been getting their luggage off the plane; if he'd been there when Tony had received the call, there was no way he would have agreed to the prospect of Tony going off alone and unarmored to a meeting at an unspecified location. Tony hadn't been thrilled himself, especially given the fact that Kooning had known which hotel he was staying at before he had even checked in.   
  
He'd managed to sneak away from Steve by the expedient of informing Jan that Steve currently had only one formal suit to his name, and that if she didn't take action to remedy this, Steve would blithely wear said suit to every single day of the hearings, probably with the same tie. Jan had immediately dragged him out to go shopping in order to save him from this hideous fate.   
  
Now he was waiting under the broad awning of the Washington Court Hotel, the briefcase holding his armor back up in his room, as instructed. Thankfully, even if the Extremis wasn't working for anything else, he could still use it to call the armor. It might take a little longer to get to him, but he wouldn't be totally defenseless.   
  
The long, black limousine pulled up in front of the hotel at the exact moment that Tony's watch struck nine o' clock. Kooning always had a flair for the melodramatic. He couldn't begin to compete with Doom or the Mandarin, though.   
  
The door of the limousine opened, revealing a bland, off-white interior. Kooning was sitting alone in the back of the limo, devoid of even the usual security personnel. "Stark," he said, nodding at Tony. "I appreciate the punctuality. I'm due at the Hill at ten, so we need to make this brief."   
  
"I didn't have much of a chance to be late, with you picking me up from the front door of my hotel." Tony climbed inside the limo and shut the door behind him. The driver immediately started the car rolling forward again, and there was a faint click as the doors automatically locked.   
  
"It's been an interesting experience working with you, Tony," Kooning began, as the limo pulled out of the hotel driveway into DC traffic. "I'd like to continue working with you rather than against you." He smiled slightly. "I'm not going to insult your intelligence by telling you what to say when you get up in front of the Joint Committee this week, or what to tell the media, but I'd like to remind you that if Registration ends and the Initiative is shut down, the Depart of Defense is going to be doing some downsizing. There are a number of military contracts currently on the table that we won't need anymore."   
  
Meaning that if Tony didn't help keep Registration and the Initiative in place, all of Stark Enterprise's government contracts would be terminated. Tony might almost have felt threatened, if that represented more than a tenth of the company's profits; SE had made four times its income from U.S. Government contracts last fiscal year with sales of that damn satellite/internet cell phone the board members were so fond of.   
  
Tony smiled at Kooning. "Those are losses I'm willing to accept. I know exactly how much my company stands to lose, and how much the public stands to gain." And even if it had threatened to completely destroy Stark Enterprises, he wasn't going to continue supporting Registration. Before, it had been the only way out of a potential disaster of global proportions. Now, the situation had changed for the better, and he owed it to more people than he could name to clean up some of the mess he'd made.   
  
Kooning wasn't smiling now. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Superhuman Registration is vital to the protection of this country, Tony. The Initiative is vital. We can't let one man's crimes taint the entire program. Dickstein's actions have been a major black eye for this administration; we need to remain united, to win back the public's confidence in registration."   
  
"I'm afraid you'll have to do that without me, Mr. Secretary." Tony kept smiling. It was beginning to make his face hurt. In spite of the early hour, there was a sealed bottle of champagne sitting in the far corner of the cabin, inside an ice bucket decorated with the DoD's seal. He wondered if it came standard with the limo, or if Kooning had arranged it. Either way, Obediah Stane had been far better at these kinds of mind games. So had Tiberius Stone.   
  
"Things could become very uncomfortable for you, Tony," Kooning informed him, voice serious but not too serious, as if they were having a friendly man-to-man talk. "I'm sure there are things in your past that you would prefer not to have dredged up again. The incident last year during which your armor was taken over by a terrorist has never been properly investigated. And I have it on good authority that that meeting you have at the Pentagon as soon as I'm finished with you is not going to bode well for your continued control of SHIELD."   
  
"Again, Mr. Secretary, do you really think I care?" Government officials were like corporate negotiators; you could never show weakness in front of them, and they tended not to appreciate subtlety. "I didn't want the job, anyway, and the press already has enough dirt on me to last them several lifetimes. What's a little more bad publicity?"   
  
"Then there's the matter of your new Extremis abilities. The last few weeks have sparked a lot of interest in the Pentagon over just how... extensive they are. Honestly, if we were forced to make a choice between investigating your Extremis abilities or resuming work on the supersoldier serum, you would be our first choice."   
  
"Sorry, Mr. Secretary. Extremis isn't up for grabs." Tony didn't bother with a false smile this time. The two of them weren't pretending anymore.   
  
"You might not get a choice in the matter."   
  
"And that's supposed to convince me to keep the program that ensures that in place?"   
  
Kooning was scowling now. "You're making a mistake, Stark. And not just for yourself; for this entire country."   
  
"I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. This isn't one of them." Tony leaned forward and tapped on the glass panel separating the chauffeur from the rest of the car, then slid it open. "Back to the hotel. I have an appointment at the Pentagon, and the Secretary has to be on Capitol Hill in forty-five minutes."   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
"Secretary Kooning, it has been brought to the attention of this committee that several of the superhumans drafted by the Fifty States Initiative are minors under the age of eighteen." Senator Byrd's faint Virginia drawl lent his words a genial quality that did not match the steel in his tone. "The minimum age for military draft is eighteen. Can you explain why you felt an exception was warranted in this case?"   
  
Tony had had several run ins with Senator Byrd, one of which Steve had even seen on television, back when Byrd had made it his goal in life to hound Tony into revealing Iron Man's identity, but he'd always spoken of the man with respect. Listening to Byrd's carefully measured voice as he questioned Kooning, Steve could see why.   
  
He slipped silently into the Senate chamber, Sam and Luke flanking him. They'd made him leave his shield outside the door -- Peter had stayed behind to guard it, possibly because there were television cameras on the Senate floor -- and Sam was now sticking to Steve's side like glue. Jan brought up the rear behind them, gently easing the door shut.   
  
"Gladly, Senator," Kooning said, fairly oozing reasonableness. "Teenage superhumans, those whose powers are just emerging, are among the most high-risk groups. Compulsory training and service gives them the skills and experience-" he broke off, turning to stare at Steve and the other superheroes. "Shouldn't he be under guard?" He pointed at Steve, frowning. "Prior to his injury and disappearance, Mr. Rogers was about to be arraigned for criminal acts."   
  
Steve could sense Sam stiffening beside him. Behind him, Jan gave an irritated sigh. "Wretched man," she muttered very quietly.   
  
Senator Byrd frowned, bushy white eyebrows drawing together. In spite of looking like somebody's grandfather, he managed to command the room in a way that even Kooning, no slouch at public speaking, could not quite manage. "Steven Rogers received full amnesty from the President, and given that we're currently re-evaluating the legal status of the Registration Act itself, whether or not he could have been convicted of violating it in the first place is currently in question."   
  
"He disobeyed a direct military order," Kooning protested. "He hasn't been pardoned for that."   
  
"I wasn't aware that the Director of SHIELD was a member of the United States Military," a congressman with a heavy New York accent broke in.   
  
Byrd ignored the interruption. "Mr. Secretary, I believe we can finish discussing the drafting of minors later. Mr. Rogers is not on trial here. However," and he turned and pinned Steve with a sharp blue gaze, "my esteemed colleagues are very much interested in what he has to say concerning the Registration Act."   
  
Steve felt frozen for a moment, still standing in the middle of the aisle. It was only the first day of the joint committee's hearings; he wasn't supposed to be called to the stand until later. He and the others had only intended to watch, to get a feel for how things were going.   
  
Tony wasn't even there. He was off at the Pentagon dealing with SHIELD business (it might not be a part of the US military in legal fact, but somehow all SHIELD operations ended up involving the Pentagon anyway). Tony was supposed to be there when Steve spoke. "I don't care what anybody says to you," he'd said that morning, while re-tying Steve's already perfectly well-knotted tie. "I don't care what you were planning on doing last time; don't martyr yourself over this. We need you too much, and not just as some kind of damn symbol." And then he'd pulled Steve forward by the newly-knotted tie and kissed him. "Remember, I'll be watching you on the stand."   
  
Steve had been oddly reassured by that; by the silent promise that they were going to do things right this time, together. Except that now he was expected to speak  _right now_ , and Tony wasn't there, and he hadn't expected -- Steve took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and took a second to mentally go over the speech he'd prepared.   
  
It was almost the same one he'd been planning to give two months ago, with several small but vital changes. He'd gone over it with Tony on the plane ride down, until he had it memorized, something he was now intensely grateful for. He hadn't brought any notes.   
  
Everyone in the Senate Chamber was staring at him, the dull susurration of whispers filling the room. "...thought he was dead..." "...on CNN..." "...back now..."   
  
"Senator," Steve said, very deliberately not looking around at the staring crowd, "are you sure you want me to testify now? It wasn't on the agenda."   
  
"Oh, I think it would be in everyone's best interests to get this out of the way," Byrd said dryly. "If you would be so kind..." he gestured at the spot at the table that Kooning had just vacated.   
  
It wasn't the same thing as sitting behind a witness stand in court, but it felt like it. The galleries around the room were filled with spectators, all of them staring down at the long table where the committee hearing was being carried out. Steve reminded himself that the stakes were different this time, that that time, what he said would actually make a difference, that he wouldn't just be speaking to justify his actions.   
  
From her spot in the crowd, Jan winked at him.   
  
And this time, whether Tony was physically present or not, Steve wasn't in it alone.   
  
"The night before the President signed the Superhuman Registration Act into Law, Director Hill, the head of SHIELD, came to me and gave me a criminal order. I refused to obey her, and she opened fire on me. Which of us was in the right in that situation is not the question right now." Kooning, now sitting further down the table, frowned darkly. Steve ignored him, and went on, "Once upon a time, I swore an oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I believed, and still believe, that the Registration Act, in the ways in which it's being enforced, is unconstitutional. Not only does it infringe upon the civil rights of American citizens, it actively endangers not only the superhumans it concerns, but also the people around them..."   


 

* * *

 

  
Conference room A-12 was deep enough inside the bowels of the Pentagon to be completely devoid of windows. The walls were pale grey. The rug was dark grey. The chairs lining the long, rectangular table were navy blue. Even the Air Force major lurking by the door in case one of the generals wanted coffee was wearing blue. It was like an obscenely boring tribute to the Civil War.   
  
Wait, they'd just asked Stark another question. Dugan forced himself to concentrate, resisting the desire to check his wristwatch again.   
  
"With all due respect, General, enforcing US law is not SHIELD's primary objective. After the destruction of the Helicarrier and the loss of nearly sixty percent of our personnel, we simply didn't have the manpower to waste. Our primary objective is counter-terrorism, and for the past two weeks, New York -- in fact, the entire country -- was under attack from three major known terrorists." Even though Stark's face was drawn, and his eyes looked bruised, his ridiculously expensive suit was impeccable, and for once, he'd apparently managed to resist the urge to mess with his hair. And for almost the first time since Dugan had been forced to start working with him, they didn't have that eerie blank look.   
  
"That explains why you started granting amnesties," one of the generals said. "It doesn't explain why you combined forces with the superhuman threats, or why you started taking orders from Nicholas Fury." The side of the table opposite the SHIELD delegation had enough stars to fill a planetarium: four generals, one from the Air Force, and two Navy Admirals. Dugan, Stark, and Maria Hill were definitely outranked, and they wanted to make sure they knew it.   
  
It might have worked, but Dugan had failed to be intimidated by the best, and Stark, civilian that he was, didn't realize that he was supposed to be cowed.   
  
"Superhuman threats," Stark repeated. "I'm not the one who okayed releasing Bullseye from prison. Would you prefer it if we'd refused their help and let the Doombots destroy Times Square?"   
  
Sniping at a panel of three and four-star generals was not going to help SHIELD's case. There was a time and place for rudeness, and this wasn't it. Stark needed to drop the attitude; he knew better than this.   
  
"Like Director Stark just pointed out," Dugan interjected, "SHIELD's critically low on manpower right now. We'd have been fools to turn down the help."   
  
"Do you have any idea what the international reaction to your buddy Fury's involvement is going to be like?" General Butler was only a three-star, but he had enough political pull to have serious ambitions for a fourth. His left breast was a checkerboard of colored ribbons. Dugan was unimpressed. He had more. So did Nick. "He violated Latveria's national sovereignty, acted behind the UN's back, and lied about his black ops programs, and I, for one, sympathize with our allies' reluctance to see him return."   
  
Dugan was sure that he wasn't the only one in this room who not only didn't mind that Nick had violated Latveria's national sovereignty, but who would love to see someone do it again, preferably with a bayonet. "Latveria has repeatedly violated  _U.S._  sovereignty," he reminded Butler. "Unless the army of robots that were marching through Manhattan chanting 'Doom, Doom' belonged to some other Eastern European nation." All right, maybe this was the time and place for rudeness. Ask a stupid question...   
  
"Actually," Stark said, smiling tightly, "the international community doesn't so much object to Fury as they do to having any American in charge of SHIELD. The UN isn't happy with the way we've been operating over the past few months. I have about half a dozen letters from the French, German, Indian, Russian, and Israeli governments lying in my inbox demanding to know why we've suddenly become the American government's private anti-superhero police force, and they're not the only ones. Wakanda is lobbying for diplomatic sanctions against the US for civil rights violations, and Atlantis is threatening military action."   
  
And by "military action," Stark meant that Namor had threatened to personally come to DC and start hitting people. Dugan suspected that the only reason they hadn't had to face off against him yet was because there was some sort of political screwiness going on in Atlantis.   
  
"Military action," Butler repeated, scowling. "Atlantis has already assisted a mass escape from a federal prison."   
  
"It sounds like you're in a difficult position, Director Stark." Admiral Gorgas regarded them levelly. "And on that subject, do you have any idea how much Helicarriers cost?"   
  
Maria Hill opened her mouth to speak. Dugan glared meaningfully at her, and she shut it again, silently. She might have made a half-decent subordinate, if it weren't for the fact that she'd stabbed Nick in the back.   
  
"Considering that I designed it? I'd say I have a pretty good grasp of the price." That worn look on Stark's face deepened, and he dropped his eyes for a second. He blamed himself for the Helicarrier's destruction; that was obvious. How exactly he thought he might have prevented it, other than possibly by getting blown up along with it, was unclear.   
  
"When you were appointed Director of SHIELD," Butler said, "certain... agreements were made. You have repeatedly failed to live up to them."   
  
Meaning that he'd refused to be their puppet, which was the real reason no one in this room had backed Nick up when the whole Secret Wars thing came to light. "SHIELD captured the Mandarin," Dugan reminded him, just to point out how ungrateful he was. "We stopped the Red Skull, exposed a terrorist agent in the US House of Representatives that the CIA somehow managed to miss, and stopped Doom from blowing up Midtown."   
  
"By pardoning and arming unregistered superheroes."   
  
"Which is far less dangerous than pardoning and arming convicted murderers," Stark said. On his far side, Hill had the grace to look shamed.   
  
"When the UN debates the status of your Directorship, which they will, our recommendation will be for your removal." Gorgas sounded regretful, but almost certainly wasn't. "The position should never have been given to a civilian in the first place."   
  
"And Fury will be dealt with," Butler added.   
  
"If you're implying that I wasn't qualified for the job, you're probably right. But if I was in your shoes, sir, then when it came time to put my support behind a candidate to replace me, I'd back Nick Fury. If France and Russia get their way, whomever replaces him is going to be looking very closely at SHIELD's relationship with the U.S. Government."   
  
"Fury's too much of a wildcard." That was the Air Force general, a man Dugan wasn't familiar with.   
  
"Yeah," he said, "but he'll cover your asses for you. Sir."   
  
"Trust me, sir," Hill said. "You really don't want them investigating."   
  
"The international community would never accept him," Butler said. "Not after the Latverian mess."   
  
"Actually," Stark said, "China has asked that he be re-instated. Well, they asked that I remain in office, but I when I explained that Fury had actually been in charge of the operation that took down the Mandarin, and that Iron Man was just following his orders, they were very vocal in their support." After two weeks of insisting that SHIELD stay out of their business, the Chinese government had changed their tune when the full extent of the Mandarin's plans had come to light.   
  
The coffee-fetcher by the door stirred. "Permission to speak, sir?"   
  
"Go ahead, Major Mitchell," the Air Force general said.   
  
"China's not the only country that's willing to accept Colonel Fury. Wakanda really wants a Wakandan to get the position, but they've indicated that they would accept Fury's return as an alternative to another, um, 'anti-mutant puppet.' They feel that they can trust Fury not to be manipulated by any one national government. And Atlantis, um, wanted an Atlantean, but they're willing to go with Wakanda, and where Wakanda and Atlantis go, a lot of other countries will follow. Well, except for France. They're insisting on a French guy."   
  
"Thank you, Major Mitchell." The Air Force general didn't sound particularly pleased by this intelligence. "We'll take that into consideration."   
  
The panel of officers didn't exactly dismiss them, but that was only because they weren't actually part of SHIELD's chain of command.   
  
"So," Stark said, after the (grey) door had fallen shut behind the three of them, "I think that went well."   
  
"In what way does that qualify as 'well?'" asked Hill, frowning at him.   
  
He smiled tightly. "The last time I was fired, the man doing it handed me a glass of champagne." Despite his expression and cheerful tone, he looked exhausted and almost diminished, as if the act of arguing for Fury's re-instatement had taken something vital out of him.   
  
Dugan was much more familiar than he wanted to be with the particular slump to Stark's shoulders. Thank God it was Cap's job to stop him from putting his fist through mirrors now. "I'm sure Major Mitchell would have been happy to bring you coffee."   


 

* * *

 

  
Steve re-settled his shield across his shoulders, tightening the left strap. It was silly to feel relieved, but the familiar weight made him feel indefinably better. The entire time he'd been on the Senate floor, he'd felt oddly exposed, almost naked.   
  
Back in the Senate chamber, the discussion was still continuing, but after giving his speech -- and fielding all the questions everyone had had for him afterwards -- he'd been ready to call it a day. Jan and Luke were staying behind to watch; Jan found it interesting, and Luke was either also interested, or wanted to keep an eye on the proceedings. Normally, Steve would have found it interesting himself, but he'd had enough of politics for the moment.   
  
"So, what was going on?" Peter asked, peering up at Steve and Sam anxiously. "Why did it take so long? They haven't changed their minds and decided to arrest us, have they?"   
  
"Nope," Sam said. "They decided they wanted to ask Cap some questions." He slapped Steve on the shoulder. "By the way, good job, man. Byrd was really listening to you, and I think a couple of the others were, too. The New York representative, Rosen, is really sympathetic to superheroes, seeing as Sentry and I saved him from getting shot. I never thought I'd say this, but I think we might actually have a chance."   
  
"Rosen wants to pull troops out of Iraq and thinks he can use this as an excuse." Objectively, he knew that a victory would be a victory, and that getting the SHRA repealed was a good thing even if the men who voted it down had their own private agendas, but there was a small, naïve part of him that had hoped that they would all choose to repeal it because it was the right thing to do, not because they saw some advantage in it for themselves.   
  
"Hey, sounds good to me." Peter grinned, and tugged at his tie. "I just want to go home and stop looking over my shoulder for FBI agents." He glanced around the marble-floored lobby, then shrugged. "I'll see you guys later. MJ's going to meet me at the Native American Museum for lunch." He checked his watch, then flinched. "I mean, dinner. Damn; I'm three hours late." He hurried off, stopping at the door to give them both a little wave.   
  
Steve and Sam followed Peter at a more sedate pace, their footsteps echoing off the polished stone floor. "If this goes through," Steve said after a moment, "Tony and I want to restart the Avengers."   
  
Sam nodded, looking unsurprised. "I thought you'd be planning something like that."   
  
"I'd really like you to consider joining the team." Steve stared straight ahead, carefully not looking over at Sam; he didn't want to pressure him into anything. "You're one of my best friends, and having you with me on this would mean a lot to me."   
  
"You know teams aren't really my thing, but I'll tag along for a while. If you're really thinking of doing this with Stark, you're going to need all the help you can get. A lot of people aren't going to want to have anything to do with him."   
  
"That's why it's important to do this," Steve said. "Nothing will really be fixed until we all start working together again."   
  
The sunlight outside was blindingly bright after the cool dimness of the old building. The wide, white marble steps were crowded with people, most of them waving homemade signs in support of registration, everything from "Remember Stamford," to "Superhumans are  **Not**  Above the Law," to "God Hates Mutants." There was a small group of counter protestors carrying "Go Spidey!" and "I <3 Captain America" banners, and one lone man with a large, printed sign that proclaimed "Down With Dubya" in all-capital letters. Steve tried very hard to pretend they weren't there.   
  
Sam lifted his right wrist, and Redwing spiraled down out of the sky to land on it. He tightened his talons in Sam's sleeve and cocked his head to one side, chirring at Sam.   
  
"Yes," Sam said, "it did take forever. I don't know why you wanted to come. You would have been bored."   
  
Redwing hunched his shoulders, fluffing his feathers out.   
  
"All right, I'm sorry," Sam told him. He turned back to Steve, ignored Redwing as he walked up his arm to perch on his shoulder. "Are you sure you want to do this right now? Are you sure that you're not cutting Stark extra slack because you're sleeping with him?"   
  
How could Sam think that? "Of course not," Steve protested. "You know me better than that, Sam. Tony was trying to the right thing; he deserves a second chance." He could have pointed out that he'd given Sam a second chance, but that would have been unfair. Sam had been manipulated by Wanda, and he didn't deserve that.   
  
"I know," Sam said, "but you've always wanted to think the best of people, and that can get you into trouble."   
  
"I don't think looking for the best in people is a bad thing." Tony needed someone to believe in him, or he'd live down to everyone else's expectations. He'd done it before.   
  
Sam shook his head. "I'd say you'd be better off with Sharon, but she's dating your crazy-ass ex-sidekick, and I don't want to get involved in that."   
  
"I'm trying not to think about that." Steve glanced around the capitol building's wide steps. He'd planned to go and wait for Tony at the Pentagon, but he'd also planned to be out of here much sooner, and he had no idea where Tony would be at this point. He might still be in Crystal City, or back at the hotel, or... standing right there at the bottom of the steps.   
  
He was standing near a group of tourists who were photographing the protestors, and was looking up at Steve. Steve could see his faint smile from where he stood, at the top of the steps. He'd obviously seen them before Steve had spotted him; Redwing tended to stand out.   
  
"Tony's here," Steve said. "I'll see you later. And, Sam, I'm really glad you're willing to think about joining the team. It'll be great to have you there."   
  
Sam grinned at him. "Yeah, I'll see you later."   
  
Steve did not race down the steps toward Tony, but he took them quickly. When he reached the bottom, Tony laid a hand on his arm and stared at him for a long moment, looking almost relieved. "Do you have any idea how much that suit you're ruining the lines of with that shield costs?" he asked, expression solemn.   
  
"No?" Tony had had the dark grey suit tailor made, and it probably cost more than the entire contents of Steve's closet, but Steve had learned not to ask about price when Tony was involved with something.   
  
Tony smiled. "You look good."   
  
"So do you." It was true insofar as Tony always looked good, but he also looked tired. It was starting to worry Steve a little; Tony should be recovered from the recent fighting by now. "How about we skip the restaurant and just go back to the hotel for room service?" he suggested, "I'm starting to get tired of people staring at me." Which was also true. He was ready to move past his death and return, ready to stop thinking about it, and with the way people had been staring at him all day, that was difficult to do.   
  
"I can do room service," Tony said, still smiling that little smile. It was a genuine smile, one that went all the way to his eyes, not a nervous grimace because Steve was supposed to be dead, or an awed look of hero-worship because he'd come back.   
  
Steve smiled back. "Great. Oh, and Sam's agreed to join the team, so we've got a start."   
  
"That's good." Tony started towards the street, his hand still on Steve's arm. "Hank will be here in a day or two to talk to Congress. We can ask him and Jan then."   
  
The Washington Court hotel had a very fancy room service menu, which offered a choice of "seared duck breast" or something called "agnolotti," which Steve thought might possibly be lamb, but wasn't sure, and he didn't want to ask and look stupid in front of Tony. He'd ordered tomato soup and chocolate cake.   
  
While they ate, he told Tony how the opening sessions of the hearings had gone, and that he'd been called up to speak early.   
  
"I know you did a good job," Tony said. He was leaning against the bed's carved wooden headboard, and Steve was laying flat on his back, head resting on Tony's thigh. "People listen to you, Steve; they always do. You have the strength of your convictions, and that speaks to people."   
  
Steve sighed, staring up at the ceiling. The potted palm in the corner of the room cast weird, spiky shadows across it. "I wish that was true. I have the feeling that, if we win this, it will be because half the politicians in that room saw some advantage in it. Even Rosen has his own interests in mind, and he's a New Yorker. You'd think he'd oppose Registration because it doesn't keep the city safe, but I think he mostly just doesn't like the Initiative."   
  
"Congressman "No blood for oil" Rosen?" Tony snorted. "He got elected because he opposed the war in Iraq; of course he's going to use this to further his agenda. He's got campaign promises to fulfill." He ran a hand through Steve's hair and Steve closed his eyes, feeling the tensions of the day vanish. "Rosen really does like superheroes, though," he went on. "Early on, when I was trying to keep the SHRA from being passed, he was one of the few who actually listened to me."   
  
"I know," Steve admitted, "but I hoped that people would want to take this down because it was the right thing to do."   
  
"Steve, did you really think it was going to be like  _Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?_ " Tony sounded amused, fingers still running through Steve's hair.   
  
Steve turned his face into Tony's thigh, and mumbled, "No, not exactly like that." How had Tony known? Now that he'd put it that way, it sounded like the silly fantasy it was. "No," he said, more loudly.   
  
"Even if they've got ulterior motives, people are still supporting you, even some of the ones who were calling you a traitor two months ago." Tony's fingers stilled, and he gave Steve's shoulder a gentle shove with his other hand. "And in any case, you're better looking than Jimmy Stewart."   
  
"I always liked Cary Grant better, anyway."   
  
"I thought you liked Basil Rathbone in leather pants."   
  
"Errol Flynn, too," Steve agreed. He opened his eyes, gazing up into Tony's face. He sounded amused, but he still had a ragged-around-the-edges look, and his eyes were shadowed. "What happened at the Pentagon?"   
  
"Dugan managed to talk them into backing Fury's re-instatement."   
  
"That... must have taken some persuading." Or possibly blackmail; Fury had not been a popular man when he'd run away in the wake of the Secret War. "What about you?"   
  
Tony made a little, half-laughing noise. "They're recommending that I be removed from command immediately. I don't blame them; I should never have been in charge of SHIELD in the first place."   
  
No, he shouldn't have. Not because of any incompetence; not for the reasons Tony probably would have cited. Tony had hated being Secretary of Defense; he must have hated being in charge of SHIELD, too, and you couldn't do your best in a job you hated. Two months ago, he would have put Tony's acceptance of the position down to ambition, thought that it was some kind of power grab -- hell, that was what he'd thought when he'd first heard of it, upon waking up in Strange's house -- but now he would bet his boots it was an attempt to put some kind of control on the way Registration was enforced. That, or Tony had been afraid of what someone else in the position might do.   
  
Steve sat up, scooting back against the headboard to sit beside Tony, facing him. "From what I've heard, you didn't do that badly." Dugan had actually sounded almost respectful when he'd described Tony's brief command, and Fury had only used a minimal amount of profanity, which from him was a compliment.   
  
"The Helicarrier blew up." Tony's voice was quiet, even, as if he was stating a fact he had no real emotional connection with. "Do you know how many people I got killed?"   
  
He might sound as if he didn't care, but Steve could see the guilt in Tony's eyes, and he was filled with a ridiculously protective desire to make it all go away. He wanted to remove Tony's misery just by willing it gone; the way Tony had dispersed his discontent simply by touching him.   
  
He put a hand on the back of Tony's neck, where the hard lines of muscle merged into his shoulders. "That was the Mandarin," he said, "not you."   
  
Tony leaned into his touch, and his face relaxed, the tension easing out of his expression, eyelids fluttering to half-mast. Steve pulled Tony forward so that he was leaning against Steve's shoulder, letting his hand slip from Tony's neck, until it was resting on the small of his back. If he could have somehow fixed things so that Tony didn't have to deal with these kinds of disasters... But that wasn't the way things worked. Tony's various irritating attempts to shield him from things usually annoyed Steve for just that reason. They were both adults; they had to face their own problems.   
  
He thought he understood, a little, why Tony kept trying, though.   
  
Earlier, Sam had suggested that Steve was cutting Tony extra slack because of the way he felt about him. He was almost sure that wasn't true, but... would he want to protect any other teammate this way? If he was reacting differently to Tony than he would to any other fellow superhero, it could cause problems for a new Avengers team. It wouldn't be fair, for one, either to the rest of the team or to Tony.   
  
That was a problem for later, Steve decided. The Registration Act hadn't even been defeated yet, and thus far, the prospective Avengers team consisted of himself, Tony, and Sam. There was no use borrowing trouble right now.   
  
After a long moment, Tony sat up again, pulling away from Steve's grasp. He leaned back against the headboard once more, so that their shoulders were just brushing. "I'm sorry I missed your speech. Did you use the John Locke quote?"   
  
"I'm not sure," Steve admitted. "I don't remember exactly what I said. I left my notes here."   
  
Tony grinned tiredly. "I'm sure you were perfect. Good thing you practiced on the plane, even if Carol did threaten to fling herself out the hatch and fly the rest of the way on her own."   
  
Steve nudged Tony with his shoulder. "She did not say that."   
  
"She did," Tony insisted. "You didn't hear, because you were practicing."   
  
"Well," Steve offered him a grin of his own, settling one hand on Tony's hip and leaning in towards him, "they say practice makes perfect." He might not be able to will Tony's problems away, but he could at least take his mind off them.

 


	3. Chapter 3

  
The approximately two dozen superheroes who'd come to speak up about Registration rattled around in the banquet room of the Washington Court hotel, the yards of extra space making it even more obvious who was avoiding whom.   
  
The massive room was considerably nicer than the officers' mess on the old Helicarrier. Instead of steel deck plates, the floor was covered in deep burgundy carpeting, and the far wall was decorated with live plants, which were probably supposed to look like an indoor jungle.   
  
The hotel staff had set up a table of food along the opposite wall and fled, visibly nervous at the idea of being around so many superhumans in one room. Peter, MJ, Johnny Storm, Iron Fist, and the kids from the Initiative were clustered around it. Peter, MJ, Johnny, and Danny were talking to one another, while the teenagers stood several feet away in a huddled group and stared at them with visible awe.   
  
There was also an open bar, and Tony had spent the entire evening thus far carefully not looking at it. Steve did what he always did when he was at this kind of event with Tony: he got a glass of soda, and pretended that the alcohol didn't exist.   
  
Hank Pym, Henry Gyrich, and everyone else whom Steve hadn't yet run into had had to come over and tell him how happy they were that he wasn't dead, after which Gyrich had looked awkward, and left. Hank had hugged him, then hurried to stand on the other side of the room, where they'd all pretended that they couldn't see him rubbing at his eyes.   
  
The first fifteen minutes had been fun; despite the continued hearings looming over everyone tomorrow, it had been weeks (well, months, actually, but for  _him_  it had been weeks) since Steve had been able to talk to everyone. Then, after about half an hour, he'd realized that he was the only person in the room whom everyone else was actually willing to talk to, who wasn't being avoided by at least one person. Then, he just felt uncomfortable.   
  
The fact that Tony barely spoke to anyone and wouldn't meet anybody's eyes wasn't helping. He'd spent the evening trailing behind Steve, not bothering to defend himself any time the subject of Registration inevitably came up -- he just got quieter and quieter every time it did.   
  
At one point, Steve had looked up from talking to Luke, who had been giving him a blow-by-blow account of what had gone on in the Senate chamber after he'd left the previous day, to find that Tony had retreated to the plant jungle with Hank Pym.   
  
This wasn't surprising in and of itself, since Hank always did that at parties, and Tony did it anywhere with an open bar, but usually they would have had Reed Richards with them, and would have been carrying on an animated conversation that involved a lot of math and hand gestures. Steve thought that the three of them might be trying to avoid being seen in a group, though, considering the circumstances. And anyway, Hank and Tony weren't talking, just standing next to one another and projecting vague misery.   
  
This party was supposed to be about getting people talking to one another again, and a lot of that needed to involve Tony; it was why he'd agreed to come. That wasn't going to happen while he was hiding in a corner with Hank Pym, or trailing behind Steve and avoiding everyone's eyes.   
  
Steve dragged his attention back from Tony's profile. "So if you want a spot on the team," he told Luke, "we'd be happy to have you."   
  
Luke shook his head. "Naw, me and Danny are going to hook back up with Misty and Colleen, give Heroes for Hire another try. I've had enough of this big-time, in the spotlight, save-the-world business. All I ever really wanted to do was clean up the city, help people out."   
  
Steve nodded. "Well, you'll always have a place if you change your mind. Iron Fist, too." Danny Rand had never actually been on a team with Steve, but he'd seen him in action against the Doombots, and he was good. And obviously part of Luke's family.   
  
Tony attempted a smile when Steve walked back over to him, the expression unconvincing. "Let me guess. He said no."   
  
"He and Iron Fist are rejoining Heroes for Hire. And according to Sue, Bob is taking off for France with Lindy. Apparently the Parisian superhero team was looking for a powerhouse, and Lindy's always wanted to live in France."   
  
Tony nodded. "I'm sorry. I told you people would be reluctant to come on board any project I was a part of."   
  
"I don't think that's it." He brushed his fingers across Tony's wrist. "I think Luke wants to get his family out of the spotlight. He has a little girl to take care of."   
  
"Peter's already said that I ruined his life and he's never going to be on a team with anyone again." Tony's lips twitched in something that wasn't a smile. "I won't make you do this alone, but you might have better luck if I'm just funding the team, instead of actually being part of it."   
  
"No," Steve said firmly. "We are not talking about this again."   
  
Hank shook his head, then said, to Tony, "I'm sorry. I told you I'd love to be a part of this again, but I..." he dropped his gaze to the floor. "I can't be Giant-Man and stay on mood-stabilizers, and trust me, I really need to be on medication right now."   
  
Hank was on some kind of medication? This was the first Steve had heard of it. "We could always use you as tech support," he offered. "You've done that before, and it worked out all right."   
  
"That might work." Hank shrugged. "If Jan doesn't have a problem with it. I'm not really sure where things are with us right now."   
  
"I'll talk to her next," Steve said. "I'm sure it won't be a problem." Hank and Jan had managed to remain on a team together while in the middle of some of the most stupidly immature fights Steve had ever seen, including that whole sleeping-with-Clint debacle.   
  
"Tony." Carol strode over to them, glanced at Steve and Hank, and went on, "Can I talk to you for a second? Over there?"   
  
"Sure," he said, then glanced over at Steve. "I'll be right back," he added.   
  
After Carol had dragged Tony away from the plants, Steve turned to Hank. "What's this about medication?" he asked. "Are you okay? You're not sick, are you?"   
  
Hank sighed. "No, Steve," he said, with an edge of exaggerated patience. "I'm not sick. I'm crazy."   
  
"You- What?"   
  
"Come on, how long have you known me?" Hank asked.   
  
Steve shrugged uncomfortably. Hank had had some problems after Ultron, but he'd gotten better. "You were fine the last time we were on a team together, before Wanda."   
  
Hank shook his head. "Yeah, but then Scott died and the team fell apart, and then Stamford happened, and Registration, which I had to support because whatever they would have come up with if it didn't work would have been worse, and Tony and Reed couldn't do it alone." His shoulders sagged slightly. "And then Bill died, and it was my fault, and Jan left, and then you were dead, and it's just been a remarkably horrible year, except for the part where you came back. And as for the mood-stabilizers... why do you think I'm not the kind of wreck Tony is? Well, aside from the fact that I'm not in love with you."   
  
"Does everyone already know?" He certainly wasn't going to give Tony up, not now, but he knew not everyone was going to be happy about it, and things were tense enough as they were. He'd been incredibly relieved when Sam hadn't raised any real objections; he'd spent years avoiding mentioning that he found men attractive partly because he'd been afraid that it would make things awkward between them. Luke hadn't had any problems, either, but then, he suspected that Luke and Jessica Jones were both sleeping with Danny Rand.   
  
"Yes." Hank smirked. "And for a man who took ten years to notice Tony mooning over him, you work fast."   
  
"So," Steve ventured, "you don't... have a problem, with, um, us?"   
  
Hank raised his eyebrows. "Considering that Tony's previous dates include Tiberius Stone and that girl who shot him... Anyway, I've spent ten years listening to him go on about you. If I had a problem, I would have said something years ago."   
  
"Oh, good," Steve said. "That's good. And don't worry about Giant-Man; you'll always be an Avenger, whether you're in the field or behind the lines."   
  
Hank shrugged, smiling, his eyes looking suspiciously shiny. "I can't believe you're asking me, though. I can't believe you're willing to talk to any of us, after everything that happened."   
  
"I made some mistakes of my own," Steve admitted. "I started fighting before I'd even tried to understand what you were doing. I could have handled things better."   
  
"Maybe." Hank looked down at the burgundy carpet, then back up at Steve. "I thought you and Tony were never going to talk to each other again. Tony was certain of it."   
  
Steve stared at the plants, rubbing absently at the back of his neck. "Once I knew why he was doing everything, how could I stay mad?"   
  
Hank grinned, but his eyes were sad. "I know how that is," he said. "I can never stay mad at Jan."   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
"Look," Carol started, as soon as she and Tony were far enough from Steve and Hank to be out of immediate earshot. "I know you and Steve are talking about re-starting the Avengers."   
  
Tony nodded. "Word's gotten around already?"   
  
Carol raised an eyebrow. Tony wasn't sure, but he thought she might be wearing makeup; her eyelashes were not usually that dark. "If you want to keep something secret, don't tell Spiderman."   
  
"I don't suppose you'd consider staying on?"   
  
Carol shook her head. Her hair was back in a French braid, and she was wearing black slacks and a royal blue dress shirt; it was as dressed up as he'd ever seen her, and he wondered who she was trying to impress. He was pretty sure Simon liked her hair down; he'd always liked Wanda's hair down. "No," she said, "I think I'd like to try leading my own team for a while."   
  
"You were leading the Mighty Avengers," he pointed out. He'd known that Peter was going to refuse, but he'd taken Carol's participation for granted. She had stood by him all through the fight over Registration, and its aftermath, and they'd taken out the Mandarin together.   
  
"No,  _you_  were leading the Mighty Avengers," she said. "From the backseat. Via communicator. Has anyone ever told you you're kind of a control freak?"   
  
Tony blinked. It took an effort of will to keep his expression under control. Even Carol didn't want to work with him. "The possibility has been mentioned," he said dryly, keeping his voice casual. "You're sure you don't--   
  
"No." She shook her head again, light glinting off the crystal studs in her ears. "Simon, Jessica, and I are going out to the West Coast. LA is still a mess, and the California National Guard asked us back. Their initiative team is a bunch of second-rate celebrity-wannabees, and they want some professionals." She smiled, waved a hand. "But hey, we'll be the West Coast Avengers, so if you ever need any help-"   
  
"We'll call you," Tony said. He smiled back. The expression took effort, after an evening spent trying to pretend he didn't notice general animosity being directed towards him. His head had started to ache again -- it always did at the end of the day, or at least, it did these days -- and that didn't help. The presence of an open bar didn't help either, since a little voice inside his head kept insisting that a glass of whisky would make the headache go away. Or at least make it harder to care that he'd forfeited the right to most of his former friends' respect.   
  
"Do that," Carol said. She glanced over Tony's shoulder and frowned.   
  
He followed her gaze and saw that Simon had been cornered against the food table by one of Rhodey's teenagers, who was babbling at him animatedly.   
  
"Damn. I better go rescue Simon." She whacked him on the shoulder -- his good one, luckily -- and added, "You want me to bring you back something? I hate parties with open bars. Everyone else has a drink in their hand, and I just stand there empty-handed and look stupid."   
  
"No thanks," Tony told her. She was staying away from the bar partially because of him, he knew. Carol was perfectly capable of spending half an evening holding a champagne flute and then putting it down untouched. For all that Carol had accused him of being a control freak, he'd never had that kind of self-control.   
  
He appreciated the gesture of solidarity even more for that. One of the things he'd always loved about Steve was that even though he had no problems with alcohol whatsoever, he never drank in Tony's presence.   
  
Carol sauntered off to save Simon from his new jailbait admirer, and Tony glanced back toward the pseudo-jungle, where Steve was still talking to Hank. Hank's tie was coming loose -- Jan always tied it for him when they were together. Steve's was still perfectly knotted, because Tony had re-tied it tightly enough to survive his unconquerable habit of yanking at it. It was the red, white, and blue one that Clint had given him as a gag gift, but which Tony knew Steve loved. It would have looked silly on anyone else, but on Steve it fit.   
  
Steve laughed, and shoved lightly at Hank's arm. The soft light from the banquet hall's chandeliers made his hair gleam gold, and Tony would never get tired of looking at him, especially when he was happy. He'd thought he'd lost Steve forever, and he still wasn't entirely used to the fact that he had him back. Part of him kept expecting to turn around and find that Steve was gone again, and it made every time that Tony looked at him feel like the first time.   
  
"So, the two of you are asking Hank to be on your team."   
  
Tony flinched at the sudden voice behind him and spun around to find Jan standing only a few feet away, arms folded across her chest. "Not exactly," he said. "He's already agreed to join. I was actually just about to go find you and ask-"   
  
"If I wanted to be an Avenger," Jan interrupted, finishing the sentence for him. "And it never occurred to you that it might be just the tiniest bit awkward for me and my ex-husband to be on the same team?"   
  
Tony shrugged, trying for a smile again. "You're both founding members of the Avengers, and at this point you've both got more right to be on the team than I do. We weren't going to leave either of you out." The Avengers had always been at their best when they had all of their founding members: Steve, Hank, Jan, Thor, Clint, Wanda, and Pietro -- who weren't really founding members, but might as well have been. Pietro had lost his powers along with so many other mutants on M Day, Thor and Clint were both gone, and Wanda might as well have been, as far out of their reach as she had fallen. The team could never quite be what it once was, but the more long-time Avengers they could get together, the stronger they would be.   
  
Jan shook her head, frowning. Like Carol, she was dressed up, and, being Jan, this meant a no-doubt one-of-a-kind dress she'd designed herself and heels that made her almost five foot six. She was still a head shorter than Tony, but that never seemed to matter when talking to Jan; she could be a commanding presence even when six inches tall. "It's not going to work, Tony. Hank and I have tried. He's never going to change and we're always going to fight, and if we tried to be on a team together, the rest of you would end up getting caught in the crossfire."   
  
"If it helps any, he's not planning on being an active member."   
  
"Hank?" Jan arched perfectly plucked eyebrows. "He's just as much an adrenaline junkie as the rest of us. He'd never manage sitting on the sidelines. And anyway, what's he going to be doing if he's not an active member?"   
  
"Tech support," Tony said, "and probably helping with communications," he went on, as something occurred to him. "Until and unless the Extremis starts working properly again, I won't be able to handle the information side of things for a while."   
  
"Wait, what do you mean you won't be handling communications?" Jan was really frowning now, peering up at him intently. "You've always handled the communications."   
  
There was no use lying to Jan; she knew him too well, and was better at deciphering secrets than any psychic he'd ever met. "I damaged the Extremis fighting the Mandarin." He dropped his gaze for a second, but dredged up another smile. There was no need to make a big deal of it. "It's nothing to worry about, but I won't be able to use it for anything but the armor for a while, and even that... Having someone else run dispatch will let it heal faster."   
  
Jan's eyes narrowed. "But why Hank? There are other people who could take care of that. You, Steve, me... none of us are powerhouses, and you're going to need one."   
  
"We've gotten by without one before. Hank can't be that right now; he can't change size while he's on medication, and I'm not going to screw that up for him." Not when Hank had struggled with his bipolar disorder for so long. Tony knew how hard it was to admit you needed help.   
  
"What's wrong with him?" Jan demanded, grabbing Tony by the arm. "He hasn't said anything about being sick."   
  
Tony stared at her fingers on his sleeve, avoiding her eyes. This was probably something Hank would have preferred to tell her himself, or not reveal at all. "He went on mood stabilizers during the Registration mess, after Bill Foster died. It wasn't good." And he should never have dragged Hank into it with him. He knew the two of them and Reed had not always handled things as well as they ought to have; Reed had only a nodding acquaintance with the way that normal people dealt with emotions, Hank was never very stable at the best of times, and Tony should have known he couldn't trust himself to make those kind of decisions.   
  
Jan stared at him, her hand dropping back to her side. "He finally went on mood stabilizers?" she sounded stunned. "God, I don't know how many times I asked, and he always refused, because he wouldn't be able to use his powers. The amount of medication in his system wouldn't change with his size, so shrinking down with those kinds of chemicals in his body would kill him, and growing would reduce the effects to the point of uselessness."   
  
Tony nodded, he'd guessed as much. "And that kind of fluctuation would be worse than not taking anything at all."   
  
"But he's taking them now?" she repeated. "That's..." She smiled. "Maybe he  _has_  changed."   
  
"Does that change anything?" Tony asked, feeling less guilty for revealing Hank's secret. She didn't seem to be upset, so Hank probably wouldn't mind.   
  
"I'll think about it."   


 

* * *

 

  
Someone had gotten the hotel staff to put music on, and Luke, Jessica Jones, and some of the Initiative kids were dancing. Peter and MJ were also dancing, but to something that appeared to have a different beat than the actual music playing. Given that MJ had acted in a Broadway musical -- however briefly -- Steve knew she could follow a beat, so she must have been letting Peter lead. She seemed to be enjoying herself, though.   
  
Jessica Drew, however, did not look like a woman who was enjoying herself. She was standing at the far edge of the room, by the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the hotel lobby, staring at Carol and Simon, who were dancing six inches above the floor.   
  
Carol was leading.   
  
"You look like you wish you were somewhere else," Steve told her, coming to stand beside her.   
  
"I hate DC," Jessica said, not taking her eyes off the dance floor. "All that white marble; it's like a mausoleum."   
  
Steve could have mentioned that Thor had once cheerfully announced, while standing in the middle of the Lincoln memorial, that it was nice to see people still honoring their great kings as gods. He'd never been able to look at the Mall quite the same way again after that, especially since, on the same trip, Clint had loudly wondered what the Washington monument was compensating for. He might not have been able to take them anywhere, but he missed Clint and Thor.   
  
Instead, he said, "We won't be here that much longer. Rhodey and Jan are going in front of the committee tomorrow, and then Tony, Hank, and Reed, and after that, it should be-"   
  
"About another two months of debate," Jessica cut in. "If we're lucky."   
  
"Probably," Steve conceded, "but we'll be done here. And things have been going well." He looked over her shoulder, staring down at the lobby several stories below. "When all of this is over, if things go our way, Tony and I are going to restart the Avengers again."   
  
Jessica frowned. Steve followed her gaze to see that Carol had laid her head on Simon's shoulder, the two of them still floating.   
  
Beyond them, Tony was talking to Jan. She had one hand on his arm, and was smiling; either they could count her in, or she was wishing Tony luck. Knowing Jan, Steve would put his money on her being in.   
  
Jessica turned her head to look at Steve again. "Who's going to be in charge: you, or Stark?"   
  
Steve shrugged. That wasn't something they'd ever really addressed. "The Avengers have never really had one specific leader." They'd generally had a chairperson, and Steve had always led in the field, but when it came down to it, the Avengers had almost always operated more by committee than anything else. "I guess it'll be like before. I'll take charge in the field and Tony will handle the politics."   
  
"Are you sure that's such a good idea, given the past few months?"   
  
He knew exactly what Tony had done, and why he'd done it. Why did everyone keep acting as if they thought he didn't? If anything, he knew more about Tony's motives than anyone else at this point. And he hadn't forgiven him just because he was sleeping with him, no matter what Sam had implied. "Yes," he said, "I'm sure. Look, do you want in or not?"   
  
"Well, I might as well, since the great Ms. Marvel has no use for me." She sounded bitter, her eyes on the dance floor again.   
  
"I take it you two haven't worked things out?"   
  
"What is there to work out?" Jessica huffed, flicking a lock of dark hair over her bare shoulder. Her short red dress left her shoulders and back exposed, and Steve knew just enough about the way women dressed to know that she was showing off for someone.   
  
"I thought -- that is, you two used to be friends, once." Not that it was any of his business, really, but according to Carol, they'd been close.   
  
"She's going to LA," Jessica said flatly. "I'm staying here."   
  
"All right," Steve agreed. "I'm glad you'll be joining us." He had the uncomfortable feeling that he'd just walked into the middle of a fight, and that it might have been smarter to let Carol and Jessica work whatever this was out on their own. On the other hand, Jessica had been a valuable team member on the New Avengers, Hydra agent or no.   
  
"I'm glad too," Jessica declared, sounding anything but. She stalked off, hips swaying and high heels digging into the thick pile of the carpet.   
  
Himself, Tony, Sam, Jessica, maybe Jan, and Hank as back-up. That gave them five he could be certain of, four in a combat situation. It was enough to go on, and the Avengers had had line-ups as small in the past. Still, Steve would have liked at least one more.   
  
He moved away from the windows, glancing around for Tony and spotting him across the room, talking to Rhodey. He looked subdued, as he had for the past... Day? Weeks? A long time, anyway. But he was making vague hand gestures that, going by Rhodey's more expansive hand gestures and frown, probably meant that he was describing fighting the Mandarin.   
  
Steve hadn't warranted hand gestures. All he'd gotten was a shrug and a, "By the way, I let a supervillain electrocute me." He missed listening to Tony enthuse over his armor, even the parts when he started waving both hands through the air and explaining thermodynamics.   
  
He was halfway across the room, carefully edging past the dance floor, where Peter and MJ were now doing something that looked kind of like a tango, despite the fact that the music playing was a waltz, when Reed Richards caught up with him. Well, Reed's head and right arm; the rest of him was still dancing with Sue.   
  
"Cap," he said. "I'm sorry if I'm interrupting anything, but I just wanted to make sure to tell you that I'm glad you're back." He smiled nervously and gave Steve a thumbs up. "And, well, I'm sorry about everything that happened. It needed to be done, but I didn't want anyone to get hurt."   
  
Tony was right, Steve realized. Reed didn't look people in the eye. "Thank you?" he said. He still wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to people telling him that they were happy he wasn't dead. "Tony told me what the two of you were trying to do."   
  
"What do you mean, you're not coming?"   
  
Carol's voice was raised in a near-shout, a half-octave higher than normal.   
  
All other conversation in the room ceased. Reed's head and hand snapped back toward his body and his neck and arm retracted to appropriate human proportions. It made Steve's neck ache just to watch.   
  
"Where would I be coming?" Jessica challenged. She and Carol were face-to-face in the middle of the dance floor, Simon standing awkwardly to one side.   
  
"Well," Simon began, "We thought-"   
  
"Shut up, Simon," Jessica snapped. "Since you clearly have no use for me on your precious Initiative team, I'm taking Cap up on his offer."   
  
With a sinking feeling, Steve watched Carol spin on her heel and point an accusing finger in his direction. "Steve!" she shouted, "I can't believe you're poaching my team members!"   
  
"What?" Steve managed. He stared at her, knowing he was probably gaping stupidly. And blushing. "But, I-"   
  
"Since when am I on a team with you?" Jessica demanded.   
  
"We thought you understood that we-" Simon started, placing one hand on Jessica's arm. She jerked her arm away.   
  
"Shut up, Simon," Carol snarled. She stomped toward Steve, Jessica hot on her heels.   
  
"Don't you dare walk away from me! I wouldn't be on a team with you if you paid me." Jessica grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her up short. Carol could have pulled free easily, but she stopped in her tracks, turning back to face the other woman.   
  
"I thought you were coming to LA with me and Simon. We agreed on that."   
  
"Agreed on what?" Jessica squared off against Carol, hands on her hips. "You and Simon are going to LA. Since when am I a part of that?"   
  
"Since Latveria! I thought you knew."   
  
"With what, telepathy? How was I supposed to know?"   
  
"Because I -- damn it, why do I bother?" Carol threw up her hands.   
  
"Sell out!" Jessica shouted.   
  
"Traitor!" Carol shrieked back.   
  
"If you wanted me to come, all you had to do was ask!"   
  
"Well, I'm asking!"   
  
"Well, I'm coming!" Jessica took a step toward Carol, so that the two women were face-to-face, inches apart. Steve could almost taste the pheromones pouring off Jessica, and abruptly decided that it might be a good time to be somewhere else. He wasn't sure whether he ought to apologize to Simon, or congratulate him.   
  
Obviously, they could count Jessica Drew out.   
  
Equally obviously, it was time to leave. Tony was no doubt more than ready to stop being sociable, anyway.   
  
Everyone in the room was staring avidly at Jessica and Carol, but nowhere in the circle of shocked, appalled, and fascinated faces could he see Tony. He had probably ducked out into the hallway as soon as the yelling started, Steve told himself. There was no reason to be worried.   
  
Carol and Jessica had stopped shouting. Steve carefully did not look over his shoulder to see what they were doing instead, and made for the nearest doorway.   
  
Tony was, in fact, out in the hallway. He was sitting on one of the rose-upholstered wooden benches that lined the corridor, rubbing at his left temple with one hand. Rhodey was standing next to him, arms folded across his chest, leaning back against the wall.   
  
It was silly to feel relieved. Steve paused, easing the door to the banquet hall shut behind him, and surveyed Tony from the cover of the recessed doorway, looking for signs of Extremis-related distress. His nose wasn't bleeding, and he was sitting up straight, not slumped over from dizziness or exhaustion. His tie was undone, and his black suit was slightly rumpled, but Steve had always thought Tony looked better that way, anyway.   
  
"Damn," Rhodey was saying. "That's just... damn." He sat down next to Tony, putting his head in his hands. "What do you want me to say?"   
  
"I always assumed you knew." Tony sounded tired, and his shoulders were set, as if he were bracing for a blow.   
  
They didn't know he was there, Steve realized. Which meant that he probably ought to say something.   
  
"I thought the tabloids were just making it up." Rhodey paused, then lifted his head to look at Tony. "You didn't, um, I mean, you and I have been friends a long time-"   
  
"Yes, Rhodey," Tony interrupted. "You're very attractive. If you'd said something six years ago, and weren't painfully heterosexual, it could have been incredibly unfortunate."   
  
Oh. That's what they were talking about. The awkwardness suddenly made sense. The sudden and irrational surge of jealousy he felt didn't. Tony had every right to think that Rhodey was attractive, since from an objective standpoint, he was, and what did Tony mean, 'if he'd said something six years ago?'   
  
"Thanks so much," Rhodey said.   
  
"Look, I'm in love with Steve, all right?" Tony was staring at the opposite wall, not looking at Rhodey, but Steve thought he might be smiling faintly. It was only the second time he'd heard Tony say those words, and this was probably the first time he'd said them to someone else.   
  
The first time, Steve had been stunned. This time, it made him want to grin like an idiot.   
  
"Can we move on, or is this going to be a problem?" And Steve definitely wasn't imagining the slightly plaintive note in Tony's voice. It had better not be a problem, he decided. Or he would... what? Force Rhodey to approve of them? It was no more his place to tell Tony's friends what to think than it was for him to try and fix Tony's problems with SHIELD.   
  
"After all the stupid shit you've done, do you honestly think this is going to matter?"   
  
It sounded like a joke, but Steve didn't find it a very funny one. Most of the things Tony had done that could be described as 'stupid shit' had been attempts to get himself killed, either with alcohol, or at the hands of supervillains. He was about to step out into the hallway and put an end to this conversation when Tony spoke up again.   
  
"It's not stupid," he said fiercely. "When he was gone..." he trailed off, then said, again, "I love him."   
  
"Great. Just don't tell me the details."   
  
"When have I ever told you the details?" Tony sounded both amused and relieved.   
  
Steve reached for the door handle, and opened and shut the door again, more loudly this time. "Tony?" he called, stepping out into the hallway, "Are you out here?"   
  
Tony looked up, a small smile on his face.   
  
Rhodey jumped to his feet, not looking at either of them. "He had a headache, so we came out here. I'm gonna go and see what the shouting was about."   
  
"Carol and Jessica Drew are working things out," Steve told him.   
  
Rhodey blinked. "What things?"   
  
"Don't ask." Steve turned to Tony, adding, "I think Jessica's going to go out to LA with Carol and Simon."   
  
"I know," Tony said. "Carol told me."   
  
"Apparently, she forgot to tell Jessica," Steve said dryly.   
  
Rhodey pulled a face. "Ouch." He clapped Tony on the right shoulder. "See you later."   
  
As soon as Rhodey had pulled the banquet hall door shut behind him, Tony reached up and rubbed at his shoulder, wincing. "So," he said, "how long were you listening?"   
  
"How did you know?" He'd been very quiet, and Tony and Rhodey had both been looking the other way.   
  
"Well, for one," Tony smirked up at him, "you just told me. For another, you can't lie."   
  
"What did Jan say?" Steve asked, changing the subject to avoid admitting that he had been standing there eavesdropping on Tony for a good five minutes.   
  
"She's on the team." Tony stood, holding one hand pressed against his side. "That gives us five."   
  
"It's not a big team, but it's a solid one," Steve said. "Five's a good number; it's what we started out with."   
  
"Next thing you know, you'll be saying it's destiny." Tony was smiling, but there was a tight look around his eyes, and holding the expression was obviously taking effort. "Still, that's only four active members."   
  
"It will be fine." Steve wrapped an arm around Tony's shoulders. "I'm ready to call it quits for tonight," he said. "Do you want to come back upstairs with me?"   
  
"Do you have to ask?" Tony slid his arm around Steve's waist as they began walking towards the elevators, leaning his head on Steve's shoulder. "I've told you I hate parties, right?"   
  
He'd always assumed that Tony liked parties; he'd gone to enough of them in the years Steve had known him. On the other hand, he had spent most of this evening lurking on the fringes of the crowd or outright hiding, and Steve was pretty sure it hadn't just been an attempt to put as much distance as possible between himself and the free alcohol.   
  
He'd told Jessica that Tony would be handling the political end of things. They'd  _need_  Tony to handle the political end of things. Even with Registration probably on its way out, there were going to be a lot of highly placed objections to the reformation of the Avengers. And there'd be media attention, too, and that had also always been Tony's job. Steve was horrible with reporters.   
  
He'd known that Registration, and the past few weeks of fighting -- and his temporary death, much as he didn't like to think about it -- had taken a heavy toll on Tony, but he'd known that, no matter what kind of shape he might be in, Tony would still have his back, that Steve could still depend upon him as a teammate. But Tony did a lot for the Avengers out of the armor as well.   
  
What was he going to do if Tony couldn't do that anymore?

 


	4. Chapter 4

  
The democratic process, Steve reminded himself, was the cornerstone of freedom. It also involved truly endless amounts of talking. Steve wasn't sure if today's round of questioning had gone well or not; the joint committee had begun interviewing pro-registration heroes and government officials connected with the Initiative.   
  
Jan had managed to turn her testimony into an impromptu speech on the negative side-effects of Registration; Steve occasionally forgot how much experience Jan had talking to politicians. Reed Richards, who also had a great deal of experience with politicians and the media, but apparently had never learned from it, had attempted to explain something incredibly complicated involving statistics and probability that Steve still wasn't sure he entirely understood, even though Tony had explained it him afterwards. Of course, even Tony had admitted that he didn't understand all of the intricacies of the math involved, so Steve figured that he wasn't alone in being confused.   
  
What it had boiled down to was that Reed had supported Registration because he'd mathematically predicted that the alternative would have been something worse. It was essentially the same reasons Tony had given Steve, but with equations.   
  
Tony, unlike Reed, hadn't been able to explain why he'd known what the possible outcomes of the SHRA would be. Steve suspected that even Tony didn't really understand how he'd known. Attempts to get Tony to explain how he'd arrived at a given conclusion usually ended up involving vague hand gestures and a frustrated, "I know it works that way because it just  _does_ . That's how it looked in my head."   
  
Then a long string of Department of Defense and law enforcement officials been called on to give testimony, most of them involving the imprisonment of superhumans in the Negative Zone and memorable only for their remarkable lack of any actual facts.   
  
Not only had the majority of the congressmen in the room been unable to understand Reed's math, they had also had no idea what the Negative Zone really was. Steve couldn't shake the depressing feeling that everything aside from Jan's carefully chosen comments had made little to no impact.   
  
Now, though, they were finally finished for the day, and had all returned to the hotel for the evening. Tony collapsed into the red-upholstered armchair next to the potted palm tree. He rested his elbows on his knees and sagged forward, digging his fingers into his hair.   
  
Steve tossed his suit jacket across the end of the bed, turning to Tony. "Are you all right?"   
  
Tony made a faint groaning sound. "M'fine. Just stupid."   
  
The urge to point out that there were a variety of ways in which Tony was capable of being stupid, and to ask which of them he meant, was strong. Steve manfully resisted, waiting silently for Tony to elaborate on his own.   
  
"I should really be in New York," Tony said. His eyes were closed, and he was rubbing at his scalp with the tips of his fingers. "Stark Enterprises and SHIELD are both in something of a mess right now, and I can't stay out of contact all day long. I also can't use a cell phone during the middle of all these hearings."   
  
Steve had a feeling he knew where this was going. "I thought the Extremis wasn't working." He had been secretly relieved to hear it, even though he knew that was selfish.   
  
"It's slowly coming back on line. But it still hurts to use it."   
  
Tony had spent most of the day sitting next to Steve in the Senate chamber's gallery. Steve hadn't noticed him using the Extremis, hadn't had any idea that it was at all operational. He ought to have noticed; by now, he was more familiar than he wanted to be with the blank, unfocused look Tony's eyes took on when he was concentrating on the data in his head. Steve must have been more absorbed by the day's testimony than he'd realized.   
  
"Would Tylenol help?" Steve asked. "I saw you rubbing at your forehead through half of the party last night, so I-"   
  
Tony shook his head. "Sorry. I can't take Tylenol."   
  
Steve blinked. "Everybody can take Tylenol. They give it to babies."   
  
"Babies with healthy livers." He offered Steve a rueful smile. "It has acetaminophen in it."   
  
"Oh," Steve said. He hadn't considered that. Everyone tacitly ignored all of the damage Tony had done to himself while drinking, and Steve preferred not to think about it too much.   
  
Then Tony grinned, sitting up a little straighter. "On second thought... the Extremis grew me a new heart; it must have fixed everything else as well." He held out a hand. "Sure. Give me the Tylenol."   
  
Okay, so there was one good thing about the Extremis. Steve tossed Tony the bottle of Tylenol, watching him crack open the child-proof cap with the ease of long practice. No one should look that enthusiastic at the prospect of taking cheap over-the-counter pain medication. It was oddly endearing, but made something inside Steve ache a little.   
  
He turned away and pulled loose his tie, throwing it on top of his discarded jacket. "Jan did a good job," he said, unbuttoning his cuffs and pushing back his sleeves. "But I don't think any of them understood a word Reed said."   
  
Tony offered him a small smile. "No, but the fact that nobody in that room knew what the Negative Zone was is a point in our favor. People don't like things they can't understand. They don't trust them." He was hunched over slightly, favoring his left side, and his smile looked strained. Steve wondered why he thought he had to pretend.   
  
"That could be a problem," he said. "We want them to trust you." Tony had built the Negative Zone prison, after all. Ironically, it was probably one of the most impressive things he and Reed had ever accomplished together, especially considering that they had designed and built it in little over a month.   
  
Tony shook his head, closing his eyes. "Reed figured out how to make it work, and I designed it, but the orders came from much higher up than either of us." He opened his eyes again, trying on another smile. "Come on, do you really think either of us had the authority to get that kind of project approved?"   
  
Well, no, he hadn't, but... Even though he knew Tony hadn't been calling the shots for most of that, it was hard to imagine Tony Stark and Reed Richards following some petty government official's orders. It was both comforting to think that some of the more unjust actions taken to enforce the SHRA hadn't been entirely Tony's idea, and disquieting to consider exactly how serious a threat Tony and Reed must have perceived in order to go along with them.   
  
"Reed mentioned that," Tony went on. "It probably got lost in the midst of the technobabble, though."   
  
"Make sure you remind them of it when-"   
  
Someone knocked on the door -- not the delicate, self-effacing little taps of the Washington Court's room service staff, but a steady, quickly-paced pounding.   
  
"That's probably Carol," Tony said. He raised his eyebrows enquiringly. "Do you want me to get it?"   
  
"No," Steve sighed, "I will. She can't still be mad at me."   
  
"How long have you known Carol, exactly?"   
  
"I'm sure she's calmed down," Steve said. He unbuttoned the last button on his shirt and started for the door, bare feet sinking into the lush pile of the carpet. "And will be completely reasonable about Spiderwoman." He pulled open the door, adding, over his shoulder, "After all, she's agreed to go to California with -- Oh, hello, Clint. Oh my God, Clint!"   
  
Clint Barton was leaning casually against the wall outside, a battered knapsack slung over one shoulder. "Hey, Steve," he said, grinning an obnoxious bastard grin that Steve had missed unbelievably for the past nine months.   
  
Steve grabbed him by both shoulders and yanked him into the room. "Clint! You're back. I can't believe-" He pulled Clint into a tight hug, ratty knapsack and all. "What happened?" he asked, knowing he was babbling, but it was  _Clint_ , and Clint was solid and alive and real. "Are you okay?"   
  
"Can't breathe," Clint gasped. Steve loosened his hold slightly, but didn't let go. He blinked stinging eyes, suddenly understanding why so many people had cried on him over the past couple of weeks.   
  
He was peripherally aware that Tony had jumped to his feet as soon as Steve had said Clint's name. Now he hurried over to them, putting a hand on Clint's shoulder. "I can't believe-" he started, then faltered, stopped, and said, "Clint, I'm so glad you're here." His smile lit up his entire face, genuine and not at all strained this time. "How did you -- It's good to see you."   
  
"You bastard," Clint said. The words were muffled, because his face was currently pressed into Steve's shoulder. "I hate you."   
  
Steve let go of him, startled, and Clint took a step back, then slugged him on the shoulder. "You  _died_ . I saw it on the news. I'm never forgiving you!"   
  
Steve blinked. It was possibly the most blatantly hypocritical thing he'd ever heard in his life. "It's good to see you, too," he said, still grinning like an idiot.   
  
"What happened?" Tony asked. "We all saw you die."   
  
Clint shrugged. "Wanda did," he waved a hand, " _something_ . There was this other universe?"   
  
Oh, right, that. Steve had no memory of the House of M events himself, and couldn't quite shake the suspicion that everyone else was making it up. If it weren't for the horrible attack on the mutant population that had resulted from it, he'd have been convinced of it.   
  
"We don't talk about that," Tony said. He was still smiling, happier than Steve had seen him look in ages.   
  
"Ah." Clint nodded sagely. "Like Fight Club."   
  
"Like what?" Steve exchanged a baffled look with Tony.   
  
Clint was still talking. "I went straight to Strange's place as soon as I got back to the States, and he told me everyone was here. What the fuck has been going on? I mean, I die and everyone goes  _insane_ . I always knew I was the brains of the Avengers."   
  
"It was... complicated," Tony said, some of the enthusiasm leaving his face. "We didn't have a lot of options." It was the closest thing to a defense of himself Steve had heard Tony make in the last three weeks.   
  
Clint frowned. "I was going to kick your ass, but then I heard that Cap was back. You're still a jerk, though." He turned to Steve, "And so are you."   
  
Tony had gone still, all expression leaving his face. Steve nudged him with an elbow. "Go get Jan and Hank," he said. "And Carol, and -- get everyone. We need to let them know Clint is back." Then, to Clint, "There's going to be crying. A lot of crying. You'll need to just stand there and wait it out."   
  
Normally, Tony could have alerted everyone via the Extremis, but now, of course, he had to go and fetch them. He exited through the open door and had barely turned the corner towards the elevator -- the hotel staff had insisted that the Avengers all stay on separate floors, possibly hoping this would minimize the likelihood of explosions -- when Clint hissed at Steve, "So, you just forgave him for selling out like that?"   
  
"It was more complicated than that." Steve took a step backward, so that he could look Clint in the eye without looming over him. Clint had once accused him of trying to win all arguments by sheer virtue of being taller. "And the situation has changed. Things were never as simple as I thought they were initially."   
  
Clint shook his head. His hair was shorter than normal, cut close to his head. It made him look older, less like the twenty-year-old ex-thief who'd first joined Steve's team. "Look," he said, "maybe I don't know Tony as well as you do, but you've always been a little blind about him. I mean, I wasn't here, I get that." He looked away for a second, shrugged. "I watched most of the whole thing on TV. Including that scene on the courthouse steps, which again, I will never forgive you for."   
  
"Sorry?" Steve tried. Several people had been visibly upset upon seeing him again, but this was the first time someone had actually been angry at him for dying, as if it was something he'd done deliberately just to traumatize Clint.   
  
Clint punched him on the arm again. Hard. "Just don't... do that... again. Okay?"   
  
Steve looked down at the carpet he was currently digging his bare toes into. "Yeah, well, you don't, either."   
  
And the subject of Tony was apparently finished with for the moment, though Steve knew better than to think Clint would drop anything so easily.   
  
Clint was grinning again. He shifted his knapsack to his other shoulder. "Look, I just got into town this afternoon. I don't even have a hotel room, and I sure as hell can't afford one in this joint."   
  
"You just got here," Steve protested. "You can't leave before I've gotten to see everyone else cry on you. Anyway, with the number of hotel rooms Tony sprung for, there's got to be some place to put you." Fate had brought the original Avengers together, and he'd told Tony -- had wanted to believe, really -- that fate had collected the New Avengers, too. For the team to work, to be real, you needed not just the people you'd selected, but something extra. Someone you hadn't planned on.   
  
Carefully casual, Steve said, "I know you're not sure about Tony, but I am. We're restarting the Avengers, and you know you can always be a part of the team."   
  
Clint shrugged one shoulder. "Where else would I go? I've seen what happens when you try to run a team without me."   
  
Tony reappeared from around the bend in the corridor and ducked back into the room, the smile back on his face. "Jan's getting everyone together," he announced. "She says normally she wouldn't believe me, but after the past few weeks..." He waved a hand toward the elevator. "They're all down in the lobby."   
  
"Jan's here?" Clint's grin spread even wider. "How many people did you drag together for this thing?"   
  
"Everyone," Steve told him. "Well, everyone who was left, anyway."   
  
"Great! Is She-Hulk here? Coming back from the dead ought to be worth at least a kiss."   
  
"She's married now," Tony informed him dryly. "To Jonah Jameson's son."   
  
Clint's eyebrows arched. "That must have been an interesting wedding." He dropped his knapsack on the floor, the battered and filthy denim bundle landing right on Steve's foot, and gave Steve a jaunty wave. "Hey, old timer, bet I beat you down stairs." And then he was off, racing for the elevator.   
  
Steve watched him go. "Now I know why everyone keeps staring at me like I'm some kind of miracle."   
  
"You know that might not be Clint," Tony said quietly, not looking at Steve. "It could be a clone or an LMD."   
  
"It's Clint," Steve said. He'd known Clint for years; that had been Clint's voice, Clint's body language. And there was no way someone could mimic Clint's mix of smart-mouthed toughness and mostly hidden vulnerability. Still, Tony wouldn't be Tony if he didn't raise the paranoid objection. Steve leaned forward, and kissed him lightly. "But I can call Strange to check, if it would make you feel better."   
  
Steve took a step back, and Tony's hand closed around his arm, squeezing slightly. "It would," he said, staring at Steve for a long moment, with that intent look that made it appear as if he were trying to memorize Steve's face. He was still wearing his suit coat, but he had undone his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt before sitting down to nurse his headache earlier. With his collar gaping open like that, Steve could see the hard edges of his collarbones disappearing into his shirt.   
  
He was hit by a sudden, vivid memory of pinning Tony to the bed the previous evening and biting gently at those collarbones, while Tony did very interesting things with his long-fingered hands.   
  
"Hey," Tony rested one hand in the center of Steve's chest, fingers cool against his bare skin. "People are waiting downstairs, you know."   
  
Steve reach up and wrapped his hand around Tony's, brushing his thumb across the sensitive spot on the inside of his wrist, where the veins stood out. "I know." He pulled Tony's hand gently away from his skin and released it. "We'd better not keep them waiting. I do want to see everyone's faces when Clint walks in."   
  
"You're right," Tony said. He leaned forward and laid a brief kiss on Steve's mouth, lips brushing lightly against his. "We shouldn't keep them waiting." He turned away from Steve. "Come on," he added over his shoulder.   
  
As glad as he was that Clint was back, Steve was suddenly and intensely glad that he was currently in the elevator, and not there to watch Steve's face go red.   
  
Tony was the only person other than Sharon who'd ever been able to leave him feeling like this. Like he would agree to anything if only Tony asked.   
  
That had nothing to do with his decision to forgive Tony, though. He' done that because he finally understood Tony's reasons, not because of how Tony made him feel. The fact that all of the sublimated attraction he'd had for Tony, physical and emotional, had surfaced at the same time was understandable, probably, but hadn't influenced his decision.   
  
Probably.   
  
"You know how I said the team still needed something," Tony ventured, as the elevator's polished bronze doors slid shut.   
  
"I already asked him," Steve told him. "And that makes six. We've got our team."   


 

* * *

 

  
Since the SHRA had passed, Tony had spoken to more politicians, crowds, and assorted media people than he could count. He'd never been nervous before; even that first time, when he'd revealed his identity, he'd only felt a sort of numb resignation.   
  
This time was different. This time, he had something to lose again.   
  
Rhodey had just finished speaking, about his involvement with the Initiative, and from what little Tony could hear through the heavy wooden door, it sounded like Hank was on the stand now. It would be his turn in less than an hour.   
  
Steve had given him an odd look when he'd gotten up to slip out of the room, but he wanted to make sure that no one in there thought he was somehow influencing Hank's testimony.   
  
And this way, Tony had a chance to steel himself before getting up in front of almost everyone who'd ever mattered to him, and explaining, to congress, on national television, exactly how and why he'd sold out.   
  
This time, he had a feeling a convenient heart attack wasn't going to save him.   
  
He was about to make a lot of people very unhappy. Kooning hadn't been the only one to try to influence his testimony; Miriam Sharpe had personally called him to tell him that she knew the American public could count on him to do the right thing. He'd told her that he hoped they could. He hadn't been able to think of anything else to say; she, at least, hadn't supported registration to build herself a superhuman army or a political power base. She truly believed superheroes were too dangerous to exist, and she'd also believed that she could count on him to support her.   
  
He knew that what she really wanted was to punish everyone with superpowers -- himself included, maybe himself most of all -- for her son's death, but he'd also understood that. When he'd learned that Agent Thirteen and the Winter Soldier had murdered Crossbones, a part of Tony had been glad. He'd wanted the man dead for taking Steve away from him--was that so very different from what Miriam wanted?   
  
"What did I miss?"   
  
Tony flinched slightly, but managed to control the impulse to jump as Peter's voice echoed down from the ceiling overhead. He looked up to find Peter -- in suit and tie -- climbing headfirst down one of the stone support columns.   
  
"I know, I know, I'm late." Peter dropped lightly down to the floor, picking a piece of webbing off his shoulder. "I was coming out of the subway station and there was this mugger. Do you have any idea how many people have handguns in this city?"   
  
"The District of Columbia has one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation," Tony responded absently. He'd written out everything he needed to say days ago, and if he needed to, he could always access the file via the Extremis, and headache be damned.   
  
He'd promised Steve that he wouldn't martyr himself over this, just as he'd made Steve promise him, but if Tony had to go down alongside Registration in order to make sure it went, well, it wasn't as if he hadn't earned it.   
  
Either way, Stark Enterprises Stock was going to be taking a major plunge shortly.   
  
He knew, objectively, that his fate wasn't actually going to be decided in the next two hours, any more than the SHRA's as a whole was, but that didn't lessen the weight looming over him.   
  
Peter was shuffling his feet awkwardly now, doubtless having remembered once more that he didn't like Tony.   
  
"I'm sorry, you know," Tony said, without thinking.   
  
Peter blinked at him. "For what, exactly? I mean, you've got a lot to choose from."   
  
Tony looked away from Peter's deceptively young-looking face. He owed Peter a better apology than this, and he'd meant to plan everything he needed to say out, the same way he'd planned what he needed to say to Congress. "If I hadn't pressured you into revealing your identity, your aunt probably wouldn't have been shot. I said I would protect your family, and I couldn't." God, how arrogant he'd been. He hadn't even been able to protect his own family.   
  
Peter said nothing. Tony, still staring at the red-carpeted floor, went on, "I'm sorry I dragged you into this in the first place. You should never have had to make those kinds of choices."   
  
"What choices?" Peter's voice was sharp, bitter. "You lied to me and used me. I never made any real choices until I left." Then, in a smaller voice, "How could you do that?"   
  
That question, at least, was easy to answer. "I wanted at least one of us to still be able to look at himself in the mirror."   
  
Even now, with Steve back, with everything he'd dreamed of for so long and knew he didn't deserve becoming a reality, Tony still couldn't face his own reflection.   
  
Eyes still on the carpet, Tony heard the scuff of Peter's shoes on the floor and the creak of the door opening and shutting as he turned and walked away.   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
'Choices.' Hah. Tony just didn't get it. He kept trying to apologize for all of the things he'd done in the name of the Registration Act, and yeah, they'd all sucked and it was nice to hear him admit that, but Peter wasn't stupid. He got what Tony had been trying to do now. He'd have gotten it then, too, if Tony had actually bothered to explain his reasons at the time, rather than treating Peter like some damn pawn that couldn't be trusted to make his own decisions.   
  
Maybe if he'd had half a clue what was going on, he wouldn't have had to sneak his family out of Stark Tower in the middle of the night, right into the Kingpin's waiting arms. Aunt May had finally, miraculously woken up from her coma, but she still wasn't entirely better, and she wouldn't have been hurt in the first place if Peter hadn't been convinced that the only way to save his soul was to run as fast and far away from Tony Stark as he could.   
  
The fact that Tony had apparently paid for her medical bills didn't change that.   
  
The U.S. Senate Chamber was huge, round, and echo-y, which made sneaking in kind of hard. The carpet was deep red, and covered in little gold stars, as if someone had asked Cap to do the decorating. Peter got a very good look at it as he slunk to the only open seat in the "costumed" section of the crowd, keeping his gaze on the floor. Avoiding looking directly at anyone wouldn't make him any less late, but it did make sneaking in less embarrassing.   
  
The only remaining seat was right next to the blond guy who'd come back from the dead last night -- Hawkeye, that was his name. Counting Peter himself, he was the third Avenger to come back from the dead in the past half-year. Any more resurrections, and they'd be able to beat the X-Men's record.   
  
Peter slid into the chair, whispering a "sorry" as Hawkeye turned to look at him. Beyond him, Cap was watching the discussion going on down on the Senate floor with an intent little frown on his face.   
  
There was one more empty seat on Cap's other side, but Peter knew without even asking that that was Tony's chair. He'd thought Cap and Tony were inseparable back when they'd all been New Avengers, but now that Tony had somehow gotten Cap to start sleeping with him -- which was a mental image Peter really didn't want to contemplate, because Captain America having sex was just weird -- it was like they were handcuffed together or something. And, okay, ew. Captain America and bondage; also a bad thought.   
  
In a desperate attempt to remove the scarring mental images, Peter turned his attention to the hearing. Hank Pym was talking now, with the set jaw and squared shoulder of a man who was determined to say what he needed to whether anyone wanted to hear it or not.   
  
"Of course I registered, Congressman," he was saying. "It was the law. But we all know that's not why I'm up here. I'm here because of what the government had me doing after I registered." He smirked. "That's really the problem we're discussing here, isn't it?"   
  
"In a word," the chairman, Byrd, said, "yes. Why don't you tell us about this," he made a show of checking his notes, "human cloning project."   
  
"That's why I was brought in," Hank said.   
  
"By Tony Stark?" One of the panel members asked.   
  
"No." Hank shook his head. "I was already planning to help Tony; he's one of my oldest friends. I was ordered to begin the cloning project by Director Hill. She approached me shortly after I registered, and explained that superhumans were too dangerous to be fought by 'normal' people. She said we needed an advantage, a weapon more reliable than pardoned supervillains."   
  
"And so you agreed to clone the superhuman known as Thor for her," the same panelist went on coldly. "Despite the fact that human cloning has been banned for several years now." She was supposed to be representing New York, but, unlike Rosen, wasn't a real New Yorker, and Peter suspected she was mostly there to further her own political ambitions.   
  
"I think that if you asked Senator Dickstein or Secretary of Defense Kooning, he would tell you that Asgardians aren't human." Hank nodded at Kooning, who was sitting further down the table, glowering at him. "But that wasn't actually what I was first approached about. Hill's superiors wanted me to recreate the supersoldier serum. The clone was an alternative suggestion, when I refused."   
  
There was a sharp, in-drawn breath from Cap. Peter glanced over to see him close his eyes briefly, jaw clenched. Then he opened his eyes again, visibly relaxing. "Thank you, Hank," he said, quietly enough that Peter was sure only he and Hawkeye heard him.   
  
"So, you were not able to recreate the supersoldier serum, Dr. Pym?"   
  
"What? No, I'm probably the world's foremost biochemist. Of course I could have recreated it. But given a choice between that and the cloning project..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "Are you familiar with the history of the Weapon X program, Senator?"   
  
"Let's assume for the sake of argument that I'm not."   
  
"All but two of the original test subjects given the serum went violently insane, and later attempts to recreate the process produced even more atrocities. I don't use human test subjects, and certainly not conscripted ones. If I'm not willing to test a procedure on myself, I certainly wouldn't inflict it on someone else. Steve Rogers was my friend, I'd like to think still is. I wasn't willing to be a part of that."   
  
"So he decided to clone Thor," Hawkeye muttered. "Well, I guess that's only a small step from building Vision out of Simon's brain scans." He elbowed Cap. "Why do we let him play in labs by himself, again?"   
  
"Tony and Reed helped him this time," Cap whispered back, voice very dry. "I'm just glad to hear that it wasn't actually their idea."   
  
"I'm just glad they didn't ask me to help," Peter said. And they could have, he realized. Tony had been dragging him into every science-related project he could from the moment Peter joined the New Avengers, trying to push him into using his chemistry and computer skills for more than just web fluid and spider-trackers. He might not be a genius like Reed, but he could have been useful to them, even if only as a lab assistant. "I don't know why they were surprised when it went crazy. Clones are always a bad idea."   
  
"Be quiet," Wasp whispered harshly. "Hank is justifying his mad scientist relapse, and we are listening respectfully."   
  
The assembled Senators and Representatives asked Hank a few more questions, mostly about when and how he'd been given orders, and by whom. None of them brought up Bill Foster at all.   
  
Hank almost visibly deflated when he was dismissed, shoulders slumping in -- relief? Exhaustion? Peter wasn't sure.   
  
There were several minutes of conversation, and a couple of teenage-looking pages brought in pitchers of water. Then Tony entered the room. When Peter had seen him out in the hallways, he had looked nervous, but as he took his place at the end of the table, his face was eerily calm.   
  
"Mr. Stark," Byrd began. "How kind of you to join us today. I trust you're feeling healthy this time?"   
  
Tony actually cracked a smile at that, losing some of the robot look. "That was ten years ago, Senator. And two hearts ago."   
  
"I'm pleased to hear that." Byrd gave him a professionally polished smile in return. "You were the foremost supporter of Registration amongst superhumans, yet now you appear to have changed your mind about its necessity. Can you explain your reasoning to us?"   
  
Tony's brief smile vanished. "As some of you in this room might recall, the last time I was called in to address Congress on this topic, I spoke against Registration. But once the SHRA was passed, it became obvious that those of us it was going to most directly affect needed to have an influence on how it was enforced, or it would end up being used as just one more way to punish superhumans for their differences rather than to actually protect people. And we, Dr. Richards and I, felt that we could best exercise that influence by cooperating."   
  
Tony usually moved his hands when he spoke -- it was a geek thing; Peter did it a lot himself -- but right now he had them folded in front of him on the table, motionless. It was like watching somebody else entirely; Tony Stark the PR robot, wind him up and watch him talk. In Peter's previous experience, the PR robot thing had involved fake smiles, though. He wasn't bothering with that now, possibly because he thought "serious and chastened" would make a better impression.   
  
Tony went on to explain a bunch of things Peter already knew (that Senator Dickstein had been skeezy, that Director Hill had been a trigger-happy harpy who tortured people for fun, and that leaving Registration entirely in their hands would have ended poorly), and some things he really wished he'd learned about sooner (that Dickstein's fellow HUSAC members had supported scientific testing for superpowers, that the Negative Zone prison had been an alternative to drugging captured superhumans into "harmless" states, and that there had been suggestions of finding a cure for "undesirable" mutations). If he'd known half the things Tony was spilling his guts about now, he wouldn't have agreed to support registration for so much as a day, let alone publicly unmask and climb into bed with these people for weeks.   
  
He wasn't sure how  _Tony_  had been able to stand being their good little law abiding superhero, not when he knew what was really going on behind the curtain. Peter would never have been able to live with himself if he'd knowingly supported this... this Big Brother is watching you,  _1984_  stuff. It was hard enough to live with the fact that he'd been duped into going along with it, even for a couple of weeks.   
  
So maybe Tony had been trying to protect him. He'd still lied to him. Actually, going by what he was saying now, Tony had lied to pretty much everybody, including the people he'd claimed to be working for. Which Peter supposed was better than actually working for them, but, you know, still lying.   
  
"Cap," Hawkeye said quietly, "you know how I always said Tony was a control freak?"   
  
"Yes, Clint?" Cap said, in a tone of voice that would have gotten Peter to instantly shut up.   
  
"I take it back. Control freak is too mild a phrase. And I'm not putting my name on some government science experiment list to be on the Avengers again."   
  
"That's the entire reason we're all here." Cap's voice was quiet, level, and promised violence if Hawkeye kept talking.   
  
"I'm not talking about your boyfriend, okay. I'm talking about the creepy evil people trying to run our government."   
  
Cap glared at him.   
  
"I'm trying to listen," Peter protested. It was worse than his fifth period remedial science class. And hey, maybe there actually was one benefit out of all of this. The state of New York was never going to give him back his teaching certificate, so he'd never have to teach a classroom full of bored fifteen-year-olds with ADD again.   
  
He was trying to ignore the fact that teaching had actually been kind of fun sometimes.   
  
Tony should have been honest with him, should have let Peter know what was really going on. Then he could have... left? Ruined all of Tony's stupid plans and probably endangered everybody because he couldn't get his hands dirty? Gone along with them and hated himself?   
  
Well, anyway, whatever he'd have done, it probably wouldn't have gotten Aunt May shot.   


 

* * *

 

  
_The steady beep of the heart monitor was a counterpoint to the electronic hum all of the medical equipment gave off through the Extremis. His fault, all of it. If it hadn't been for him, none of them would be in this position.  
  
Now it was up to Tony to fix it. He owed Pepper that much, at least.  
  
Happy was the one person who had always believed in him, even when he should have known better. And this was where it had gotten him. He didn't deserve any of this; Tony owed him, as well.  
  
He reached out through the Extremis and located the feed from the computer controlling the ventilator. Switching it off was as easy as thought.  
  
The heart monitor went silent, and the background noise from the machines vanished, leaving the room in eerie silence.  
  
Tony stepped forward to the hospital bed, drawn by an irresistible force. He needed to apologize, to explain, to say good-bye to Happy. He hadn't done that.  
  
Happy's body was draped in a white sheet, the fabric covering his face. That wasn't right; Happy deserved to have Tony look him in the face when he spoke to him. He grasped the edge of the sheet in numb fingers and pulled it away.  
  
It wasn't Happy.  
  
Steve looked exactly as he had the first time Tony had ever seen him; pale and motionless and very young, which didn't make any sense, since it had been twelve years, and even with a healing factor, he should have... The red, white, and blue of his costume was strangely muted, and his shield, resting across his chest, was spotted with bloodstains._   
  
Tony jerked away, gasping for air as adrenaline flooded his body. A dream. It had just been a dream.   
  
He sat up, burying his face in his hands, fingers digging into his scalp. He'd screwed up, miscalculated, and now Steve and Happy were dead, and it was all his--   
  
Steve was lying next to him, still motionless.   
  
Feeling overwhelmed by a sense of unreality, Tony reached out and laid a hand on the center of Steve's bare chest. He could feel warm skin under his fingers, feel the steady beat of Steve's heart beneath his palm.   
  
Suddenly dizzy, Tony slumped forward until his forehead was resting on Steve's shoulder. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the sound of Steve's breathing, the gentle rise and fall of his chest under Tony's hand.   
  
Steve's chest was broad and solid, layered with hard muscle. There were no scars there, not even any of the ones Tony had remembered from before; Doom's resurrection spell had erased them all, left him with a clean slate, just as the Extremis had done for him.   
  
Steve could have used that clean slate to walk away from Tony and everything connected with him, just as Tony had walked away from him when he'd been locked in the Helicarrier's brig. Tony wouldn't have blamed him.   
  
But instead, Steve was here beside him, had stayed even though he owed Tony nothing, even though leaving would have been the easier option. He was here, and they were reforming the Avengers, and Registration was going down like a house of cards.   
  
Tony had never been so happy to see something that he'd helped build be destroyed.   
  
It would be Steve's victory, not his -- if they won, it would be in spite of him -- and it was just one more thing they all owed Steve. Without Steve, not Captain America, but Steve Rogers, the Avengers had collapsed like yet another house of cards. It was Steve who held them together, Steve who gave them a purpose. Gave Tony a purpose.   
  
Steve knew who he was and what he believed in, and he was willing to stand up for that no matter what the cost; it was something Tony had always admired and only rarely been able to live up to.   
  
Steve stirred slightly, and Tony lifted his head to see Steve blinking sleepily at him, eyebrows drawn together.   
  
"What're you doing?" he mumbled. "Come here." He tugged gently on the back of the t-shirt Tony was wearing, pulling Tony back down beside him.   
  
Tony pressed himself into Steve's side, resting his head in the hollow of his shoulder, leaving his hand firmly planted on Steve's chest. Steve closed his eyes again, and his breathing evened back out into the regular rhythms of sleep almost immediately.   
  
This was a new twist on the 'Steve is dead' nightmares that had plagued him for the past week. They had started months ago, after Steve had been shot, and had been his regular companions for almost two months. They hadn't been a problem when he'd been monitoring communications for SHIELD; he'd been getting so little sleep then that what sleep he did get had been deep and utterly dreamless. Once he'd been able to get more than a few hours a night, though, the exhaustion of the last few months had come crashing down on him all at once, and the nightmares, which he had thought banished by Steve's miraculous return, had started again.   
  
Yesterday, he'd had to go back to New York to meet with the Stark Enterprises board of directors, who were less than thrilled at the looming prospect of losing several profitable military contracts. The meetings had taken all day, and he'd ended up having to stay overnight. His bed had been wide and empty, and only the fact that Jarvis's kitten had hopped up in the middle of the night to curl up next to him had allowed him to snatch any sleep at all.   
  
As sick of Washington as Tony was getting, it was good to be back with Steve. Tony stayed awake for a long time, listening to him breathe.

 


	5. Chapter 5

"I told them that since I was in charge of SHIELD and the Initiative, of course I designed all of the tech. I wanted hardware I could trust." Tony poked listlessly at his uneaten sandwich. Steve had hoped that dragging him out of the Capitol and into a restaurant would convince him to take a break and eat, but he ought to have known better. To be fair, he had given up halfway through his own sandwich, unable to taste a thing. The joint committee was conferring right now, preparing whatever conclusions they were going to present to the Senate and the House. In less than an hour, the SHRA would either be on its way out, or here to stay.   
  
It had been a week since the last of the superheroes had testified; the committee had then begun questioning SHIELD agents, FBI agents, NYPD officers, government officials involved in the Initiative, and anyone and everyone else they could think of, including Miriam Sharpe. Now they had dismissed their witnesses, closed their doors and begun the lengthy process of debating the future of the entire superhuman community.   
  
"I take it that didn't satisfy them?" Steve asked, firmly pushing thoughts of what Byrd, Rosen, and the others might be deciding out of his mind.   
  
"No." Tony's lips curved into a momentary smirk, more cynical than amused. "SE got a lot of lucrative government contracts out of the deal, and you can't blame them for thinking it's suspicious. That's not really important, though. I only brought it up because you need to know that it might take a little longer than I initially thought to rebuild the Avengers Mansion."   
  
"It will take as long as it takes." Tony apologized for the oddest things. He was paying for the half of the repair job that the Maria Stark foundation couldn't cover out of pocket. Did he think Steve would complain if it took eight months instead of four? "I can wait."   
  
"Good," Tony said, "because it's going to be a long-term project. Sam, Clint, and the others probably won't want to stay at Stark Tower, so we're going to have to-"   
  
"What makes you think they won't want to stay in Stark Tower?" Steve interrupted.   
  
And then Tony's cell phone rang.   
  
Tony sighed. "Sorry," he said. "I have to take this." He flipped the miniscule phone open. "What is it now?"   
  
From the half of the conversation Steve could hear, Tony was discussing stock quotes, legal issues, patents, or all three at once. The call went on for -- by Steve's watch -- ten minutes, during which Tony's untouched sandwich got progressively colder and soggier.   
  
He had intended this to be a private lunch for the two of them, a few minutes alone after almost two solid weeks spent in and out of meetings with politicians, dealing with superheroes' ruffled feathers, UN inquiries into SHIELD, and various and sundry people who all now seemed eager to lay the blame for everything that had gone wrong on either Dickstein or Tony.   
  
Tony was still technically in charge of SHIELD, as well as SE, and Fury had been pawning all of the problems he didn't feel like dealing with off onto him. Stark Enterprises, meanwhile, seemed to be in something of a crisis state -- that, or they simply couldn't function without consulting Tony every few hours. On Tuesday, he'd had to fly back to New York and stay overnight, and Steve had been embarrassed to discover that he had trouble sleeping without Tony's presence.   
  
After waking up for the third time in two hours, Steve had abandoned pride and called Tony at Stark Tower. Tony had still been awake; he rarely went to bed before one a.m. Steve had pretended that he was calling to ask how Tony's day had been, but he suspected that Tony had known the real reason behind the phone call.   
  
Embarrassing or not, at least he'd been able to sleep after that.   
  
"Damn," Tony said. "I don't- Let me check the numbers for you. Right, I'm uploading them now. Good. Thank you." He flipped the phone closed and rested his head on his free hand, eyes sliding shut.   
  
"Uploading," Steve repeated, feeling a sudden urge to either reach across the table and strangle Tony, or bang his own forehead on the tablecloth repeatedly. He wasn't sure which. "I thought you were letting yourself heal."   
  
Tony's shoulder shrugged infinitesimally. He didn't open his eyes. "They needed the data before one o' clock," he said, "so they could present it at the shareholders meeting I was supposed to be in. The one that was going to restore stockholder confidence after the Stark Tower lobby was blown up. Not to mention that a lot of people aren't looking too favorably on my presence here."   
  
"I'm sorry about that." Tony was trying to do the right thing, Steve knew, and the fact that so many people were trying to make him pay for it was... probably unavoidable, considering his role in recent events, but that still didn't make it entirely fair, given how hard Tony was trying to fix things.   
  
"Why?" Tony opened his eyes, frowning. "It's not your fault." He offered Steve a smile, only slightly marred by the tightness around his eyes. "I'm just complaining. Ignore me. This is important and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."   
  
"I've missed this," Steve confessed, "phone calls from Stark Enterprises and all." They hadn't had a chance to spend much time alone together over the past week, not casually, anyway. With Tony frantically trying to run both Stark Enterprises and SHIELD long-distance, without the benefit of the Extremis, he'd been more than a little distracted. At least, Steve hoped he had been doing it without the Extremis. Tony's little demonstration just now argued otherwise, though.   
  
Back before the Avengers had broken up, they had done this kind of thing -- gone out to lunch together, or dinner -- all the time, whenever they were both in New York. And even sometimes when Tony wasn't. This kind of thing, talking to Tony, spending time with him, was what he had really missed after the Avengers broke up and during the Registration mess. The sex was incredible, but not something he'd ever expected. As enjoyable as the sex was, it wouldn't have killed him to give it up. Giving Tony up was something else altogether.   
  
"So have I," Tony said. "I-"   
  
His cell phone rang again. Tony shook his head, giving Steve a rueful smile. "I'm sorry," he repeated.   
  
Steve waved a hand at him, signifying that it was nothing, and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. He might as well be comfortable while Tony held his employees' hands.   
  
"Agent Brickner," Tony said. "I'm guessing you don't have good news on those new terrorist cells in Iraq?" There was a lengthy pause. "The Hollywood Hills? What are they doing there?" Another pause.   
  
"Hollywood Hills?" Steve mouthed, raising his eyebrows.   
  
Tony made a face at Steve, shaking his head. He was silent for a moment, a faint line appearing between his eyebrows. "She-Hulk says that she and Ares have tracked the latest group of arsonists to LA; they're using the storm tunnels to get around. I want you to give her back-up. The Governor won't be pleased if they bring down half of the city's storm drain system in order to bring them out." He closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead, and went on, "Agents who speak Spanish. Tell Dugan I'm leaving the selection up to him. Ares wants to go in in the early morning, right after sun-up."   
  
As Steve watched, a drop of blood ran out of Tony's nose. He wiped it away absently, and continued, "I want them in LA by 0900 tomorrow, Pacific time. Ares will be in charge. Yes, I know, but he insists. Don't underestimate him, Brickner; he's the god of war." Tony hung the phone up once more, then slumped forward, cradling his head in his hands.   
  
Tony was never going to heal if he kept this up.   
  
"I know," Tony said faintly, neither moving nor opening his eyes. "I know. But things are such a mess right now. You have no idea, Steve. Red Skull and the Mandarin still have people all over, and SHIELD's still trying to defuse the situation in LA, and China's had three more bio-terrorism attacks this week, and I needed information from Jan and Ares, and I only have one cell phone."   
  
"Isn't this supposed to be Nick Fury's job now?" Running Stark Enterprises and being Iron Man was already the equivalent of two full time jobs, and all of the business of directing SHIELD on top of it was more than any one person should be expected to handle. No wonder Tony was so exhausted all the time these days; he had been doing this for two months solid, and knowing Tony he hadn't taken a single break the entire time.   
  
"Not until the UN finishes hashing things out," Tony said. "The French and the Koreans are being stubborn." He pressed one hand to his face, trying to stem the thin line of blood that was now running into his moustache.   
  
Steve dipped a corner of his napkin into his water glass and handed it to Tony. "Are you all right?" he asked, even though the answer was obvious. Tony wouldn't admit to being less than fine, anyway, and he obviously wasn't going to make allowance for the fact that he was still healing, either. In the past decade, Steve had almost never seen Tony take a single break unless he was injured badly enough to be hospitalized. God, he thought, and he'd been surprised when Tony had had a nervous breakdown? No one could keep up with that kind of workload.   
  
Tony didn't answer, but accepted Steve's napkin and started cleaning the blood off his face. "I'm starting to think I should shave. It would make this easier."   
  
"Don't," Steve told him. "You would look funny."   
  
"So are you complimenting my facial hair, or insulting me?" Tony was smiling now, obviously trying to make light of the situation, as if the consequences of his injuries could be wiped away as easily as the blood had been.   
  
Steve ignored Tony's attempt at levity, marred as it was by the tightness around his eyes, and the bloodstained napkin he was holding. "Don't you ever relax?" He managed to keep himself from snapping, but it took an effort. "Why do you keep doing this to yourself?" They had talked about this. Tony had sworn he was going to stop the stupid self-destructiveness.   
  
"That's why I used to drink." Tony glanced away for a moment, then waved a hand dismissively. "Anyway, this needed to be done now; it couldn't wait. Right now, there's nobody else who can-"   
  
Steve reached out and grasped Tony's wrist, stilling his hand. "That's not true," he said. "There are plenty of people who can help you." He traced the long, curved scar that ran around the base of Tony's thumb, feeling the faint, raised edge of flesh under his fingertips. "You don't have to do this on your own anymore. You never did." If he had been going easy on Tony, as Sam had accused him of, Steve realized, it was because Tony needed it. Someone had to, and it certainly wasn't going to be Tony himself.   
  
Tony blinked, then gave Steve a slow smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. In the bright sunlight streaming through the restaurant's windows, they looked very blue.   
  
Then Tony's eyes focused on a point beyond Steve's right shoulder, and the smile slid off his face.   
  
Steve half-turned, shifting ever-so-slightly in his chair so that his torso was blocking Tony. His shield was on the floor by his feet, hidden inside its leather portfolio; he could have it ready in a heartbeat, if necessary.   
  
Miriam Sharpe was framed in the restaurant's doorway, perfectly attired in a conservative black suit with a knee-length skirt. Her hair was every bit as lacquered as it had looked on television, and her lips were thin with anger.   
  
She stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring at them -- Steve suspected for effect -- before walking over to them, heels clicking on the tile floor. When she reached them, her eyes flicked momentarily to the table where Steve's hand was still resting over Tony's, fingers curled around his wrist.   
  
Her eyes narrowed, and then she turned away from Steve, dismissing him without a word, to address Tony. "I hope you're happy, Mr. Stark. I hope you choke on your victory."   
  
Tony's vict-- they had won, Steve realized, the import of her words hitting him abruptly. The Registration Act was being repealed, or at least modified. This wasn't quite the way he'd hoped to find out, but that didn't matter. The relief was like a wave, the final bit of weight he'd been carrying since this whole thing started falling away from his shoulders.   
  
Before Tony could respond, Mrs. Sharpe went on, "I trusted you. The American people trusted you, and you've cast away all the promises you gave us and thrown your lot in with those people. The people who killed my son."   
  
Tony regarded her levelly, face expressionless. Steve could feel the tendons in his wrist stiffening under his hand. This wasn't fair; this was supposed to be their victory, the moment they both knew for certain that they'd both received a second chance. It was supposed to be something to celebrate, and in just a few words, Miriam Sharpe had sullied that.   
  
"From the very beginning, all I was trying to do was protect my family, just like you were," Tony told her, voice colorless. "That's all I'm trying to do now. There are no sides here." He looked away for a moment, then back to Miriam Sharpe, whose eyebrows were raised skeptically. "Mrs. Sharpe, I know you lost your son, and I understand how painful that is; I lost people I loved during this whole mess as well."   
  
He didn't look at Steve as he said this; Steve tightened his fingers around Tony's wrist briefly.   
  
Miriam's lips thinned further, her eyes furious. "You've never had children, Mr. Stark;" she said, voice clipped. "You can't possibly understand how I feel, how those of us whom you're abandoning feel."   
  
Steve stared at her for a moment, no immediate retort coming to mind. How could she so easily assume that someone else's grief was automatically less valid than hers? He had seen the hollow misery in Tony's eyes after Happy had died, seen the condition Tony had been in when he had come back, held him while he wept uncontrollably over everything they had lost. And this woman dared to stand there, cold and composed, ready to wield her loss as a weapon against him.   
  
And Tony was sitting there silently, not bothering to correct her.   
  
She sneered. "I don't know why I expected anything else from you. You're part of the problem, and always have been. As long as these unnatural powers exist, and people like you encourage others to use them, none of us will be safe."   
  
All right, that was enough. "It's not superpowers that are the problem," Steve said. "It's how people use them. If superhumans are using their powers to help people-"   
  
Miriam didn't give him so much as a glance, focused entirely on Tony. "You've lost nothing," she spat, cutting Steve off mid-sentence. "You and your kind are right back where you started, flaunting your arrogance and your deviance." She directed a pointed look at Steve and Tony's joined hands, still in plain view on the table. "But I have right on my side, and I will not be silenced."   
  
"But I don't have to listen to you," Steve said, standing, deliberately using his height to loom over her. He rarely did that to people outside of a fight, but Tony didn't need to hear any more of this, and he wasn't going to take any more of it. "Tony, we should go find the others. They'll need to know, and I want them to hear it properly."   
  
Miriam stared up at Steve, her eyes widening with what he identified -- with a mild sense of shock -- as recognition. She hadn't known who he was until this moment, he realized. "You're supposed to be dead," she said. "Or was that just another lie designed to further your agenda?"   
  
Tony's face actually went pale. Steve had rarely seen Tony truly angry; it was disturbing how flat and cold his eyes went. "Mrs. Sharpe," he said, in a low, controlled voice, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry someone I love came back while someone you love can't, but we have to go now." He stood up, took Steve's hand, and led him out of the restaurant, not looking back.   
  
  


* * *

  
  
Senator Byrd had called a press conference for 1500 hours. The news about the SHRA's demise had already been leaked to the general public via a dozen internet news sources, so Byrd probably wanted to get the official statement out there as quickly as possible.   
  
It was being held in the Capitol, though in a different room than the ones Steve had been spending far too many hours of his life in recently, and the press secretary had requested that Steve, Tony, Peter, and Reed and Sue Richards all be present to speak to the press. In costume.   
  
Steve was trying not to think of it as being on display, but since they essentially were on display, he was having trouble convincing himself otherwise.   
  
"Push your cowl back," Tony told him, as they approached the side entrance to the conference room. "If they can see your face, they have to think of you as a person, and they'll be more likely to trust you." He himself was still in suit-and-tie, the briefcase containing his armor clutched in one hand.   
  
Steve obediently shoved his mask back, and then ran a hand over his hair, which always stood up whenever he pulled the mask off.   
  
"There," Tony said, giving Steve a brief smile. "You look nice and all-American and trustworthy." He put down the briefcase, a slow film of gold seeping up from below his collar to his jaw line. Then he frowned, rubbing at his forehead, and Steve asked,   
  
"Does your head hurt?"   
  
"Yes," Tony sighed.   
  
"Good," Steve told him. "Maybe that will teach you not to be an idiot."   
  
Tony's armor flew out of the opened briefcase and onto his body -- all save his helmet, which he picked up and cradled in the crook of one arm. "You know a lot of people aren't going to be happy with this," he said, warningly.   
  
"They'll have to learn to deal with it," Steve said. Repealing the SHRA was the right thing to do; and had been untenable as it stood, and too corrupt to be revised. Someone would surely propose a new piece of legislation to control superhumans almost immediately, but the American people had learned that if they wanted to have any hope of superhumans working in harmony with the government, they needed to have the same rights as all American citizens.   
  
Some people, he knew, were never going to accept that, just as some people couldn't accept the idea that anyone of a different race, religion, or sexual orientation was a human being. People like Reverend Stryker and Joe Dickstein, who saw mutants as less than human, and people like Miriam Sharpe, who were so blinded by bitterness that they couldn't see superhumans as anything but a threat.   
  
Even her grief for her son had been warped into something ugly, just so much fuel for her anti-superhuman crusade, to the point that she was using him as nothing but so much political capital. To hear her speak, you would think she was the only person who had ever lost a family member through a supervillain's actions.   
  
He had watched Bucky, barely more than a kid, die defending his country, watched Simon Williams die twice in the line of duty, seen Clint give his life fighting Ultron... The fact that they had all come back, through chance or magic or luck, didn't negate the sacrifice they had made, or the grief that their deaths had caused. And she had casually dismissed the possibility of Tony, and by extension, anyone in a costume, feeling pain or loss.   
  
Until all of this had started, he hadn't realized that there were people out there who honestly did not see anyone with superpowers -- anyone in a costume -- as human. Getting the SHRA repealed was going to be the first step in changing that.   
  
The explosion of flashbulbs as he and Tony entered the room was as blinding as ever. Steve attempted to smile for the camera anyway.   
  
Tony stuck close by his side as they climbed onto the platform, whether for Steve's benefit or his own, Steve wasn't sure. Everyone else was already there, the other superhumans also in costume. Peter had his mask firmly on; he had sworn earlier that he was never appearing unmasked in public again.   
  
Byrd nodded to the two empty seats on his right. Jack Kooning was seated to his left, with Sue and Reed beyond him.   
  
Steve sat down next to Peter, letting Tony take the spot beside Byrd. There was another explosion of camera flashes, and then Byrd stood, adjusted his microphone, and began to speak.   
  
"As of twelve o' clock this afternoon," he began, "the Joint Committee on Superhuman Registration has decided to recommend that Congress repeal the Superhuman Registration Act. After careful consideration, and consultations with law enforcement officials and both registered and unregistered superhumans, my fellow committee members and I have determined that the Act, while not unconstitutional in and of itself, is being enforced and utilized in ways which violate the Constitutional rights of American citizens, and, furthermore, that it has thus far proven deleterious to this country's ability to respond to superhuman threats."   
  
He paused, and was immediately besieged with an onslaught of questions.   
  
"Senator, is this decision in any way related to Wakanda's request to have a UN fact-finding commission investigate SHIELD's enforcement of the SHRA for potential human rights violations?" Ben Urich, getting the first word, as the  _Bugle's_  staff always did.   
  
"Is the Fifty State Initiative going to be disbanded?"   
  
"Do you think the House and the Senate will actually vote to repeal it?"   
  
"Is that actually Captain America? We thought he was dead!"   
  
"Will the American government still be following through on its promise to protect Americans from dangerous superhumans?" This last from a balding man wearing a brown suit, a FOX news cameraman hovering over his shoulder.   
  
"I assure you, public safety remains a major concern of this committee." Byrd offered the man a reassuring smile, his slight drawl deepening just a touch. "However, we have reached the considered conclusion that the best way to ensure the safety of the American people from superpowered threats is to allow those with the ability to confront them to continue to operate unimpeded. If we hamstring our best line of defense, we will indeed be helpless. I think this past month's events have proven exactly how vital superheroes are to this country's defense, and while it is my firm hope that they will continue to work with the American government and in the public interest, forced Registration has not proven an effective tool for achieving that."   
  
He turned the podium over to Kooning, who announced that the Fifty State initiative was going to continue on a voluntary basis, as an extension of the National Guard, meaning that it would be under the control of individual state governors. In spite of his polished smile, it was obvious to Steve that he was not happy about having his nascent superhuman army removed from direct Federal control. The glances he kept throwing in Tony's direction spelled future trouble from that quarter, but it wasn't anything they wouldn't be able to handle.   
  
Then it was the superheroes' turn. Predictably, a number of the questions revolved around Steve and why he wasn't dead, and one reporter, whom Steve suspected was from a tabloid, mostly wanted to hear about Reed and Sue's marriage. Everyone else seemed mostly interested in grilling Tony about his change of allegiances.   
  
Tony smiled, nodded, and responded to all the questions with answers similar to the ones he'd given the committee during the hearings, answers Steve knew he'd practiced in the mirror.   
  
"Mr. Stark, you claim that the SHRA endangered the lives of superheroes families. Is this because of the tragic death of your longtime employee, Harold Hogan?"   
  
Tony's fingers tightened on the edge of the table, but his smile didn't waver. "I would be lying if I said that Happy's death didn't play a role in my decisions. But Happy was not the only person to be brutally attacked as the result of recent events. Spiderman-"   
  
"Mr. Hogan died several days after being injured by the Taskmaster," the same reporter interrupted. "As the result of a failure in the hospital's life-support equipment. Is it possible that this accident was also the result of his connection with you?"   
  
Sue Richards drew in a sharp breath, audible even though Steve was several feet away from her. Beside him, Tony had gone grey, and Steve could see the wood veneer of the table cracking under his gauntleted fingers.   
  
"While tragic, Mr. Hogan's death is only tangentially related to the subject at hand." Byrd's voice cut across the babble of noise before Tony could respond -- if he'd been planning to respond. He looked shell-shocked; the broken thing inside of him that Steve had recognized for the first time four weeks ago was written all over his face, for someone who knew where to look. "Iron Man and the rest of our superhero guests have kindly agreed to join us for this, but, ladies and gentlemen, if we could perhaps keep the discussion away from their personal lives..."   
  
Tony was still grey-looking, and answered all the rest of the questions with what was obviously less than his full attention. Two weeks ago, in the Helicarrier's infirmary, he had warned a SHIELD doctor that he could use the Extremis to turn off life-support equipment. At the time, Steve hadn't given it much thought, but now he remembered the empty look in Tony's eyes when he'd come to him the night before Happy's death, the hollow sound in his voice when he'd called to attempt to set up a meeting. That had been part of why Steve had agreed to meet with him alone, despite all the other anti-registration heroes' insistence that it was a trap.   
  
Given the number of failsafes built into life-support machines, it was improbable that Happy's had simply stopped working. He had been in a coma when Tony had spoken to Steve about him, not expected to recover. Steve hadn't know Happy Hogan well, but he knew enough to know that he hadn't been the kind of man who would have wanted to spend his life as a vegetable. Tony would have known that as well.   
  
Happy had been one of Tony's closest friends even longer than Steve had, and Tony had been carrying this around alone for three months.   
  
Steve had hoped that with the Mandarin, Red Skull, and Doom defeated, with Registration on its way out, whatever was wrong with Tony would start to get better. It wasn't going to go away entirely, he knew, because Tony had been damaged in some essential way long before Registration ever occurred, but he had hoped that with things slowly improving, Tony would begin to slowly improve himself. And that hadn't happened yet; Tony was still just as tired, just as quiet, and just as obviously guilt-ridden as he had been during the two weeks they had spent on the run.   
  
He had started to worry that maybe this state of affairs was going to be permanent. It hadn't been an encouraging thought. But in light of this, it wasn't surprising that Tony was still such a mess.   
  
It also explained why Pepper Potts-Hogan had been mysteriously absent over the past month. The only thing Steve could think of more horrible than having to make that decision for a friend was having to make it for your husband. She had to have known what Tony had done--she knew how the Extremis worked, probably better than Steve did--and knowing that must have made it too painful to stay around him. Which, of course, meant that nobody had been talking to Tony at all while Steve had been gone.   
  
It was probably wrong of him to feel relief at being able to ascribe at least some of Tony's self-hatred to something he could understand, but being able to understand it meant that he could actually  _do_ something about it, something other than feeling frustrated and useless.   
  
Byrd and Kooning stood together, calling an end to the question and answer session. Peter sprang to his feet like a man who had just been given parole from prison, dashing out the side door before any reporters could flag him down. Reed and Sue followed at a more leisurely pace.   
  
Peter hadn't gone far, however; he was waiting for Steve and Tony in the hallway.    
  
"I hate reporters, don't you?" he began without preamble, as Steve closed the door behind them. "They always try to find a way to twist everything you say or do. I mean, you stop a guy from ripping off an ATM machine, and the next day, the front page of the Bugle will say 'Spiderman Aides Bank Robber.'"   
  
"Freedom of the press is-" Steve started.   
  
"I know," Peter interrupted. "That doesn't mean I have to like it." He broke off, clearing his throat nervously, and turned to Tony. "About earlier, I mean, I guess I, um... apology accepted."   
  
Tony blinked as the flow of words finally stuttered to a halt. "I... of course," he said softly. "You can come by Stark Tower any time, if you ever want to use the labs to work on something. The doorman knows who you are."   
  
Peter nodded. "I'll think about it." He turned, and grinned at Steve. "I'm going to sneak out the back before anyone else with a camera finds me. I was always the only one who could get my good side." He dashed off down the hallway, ducking behind a column, and emerged from behind it a few moments later in civilian clothes, complete with sunglasses and a baseball cap.   
  
Tony stared after him, looking slightly stunned. Steve couldn't help but smile. This was progress, and not progress he'd entirely expected to make this quickly; Peter had had a right to be angry, and the fact that he'd looked up to Tony once had only made their falling out worse. It looked like Peter was ready to let himself move on; he hoped that Tony might take a lesson from that.   
  
Of course, it was difficult to move on with a friend's death hanging over you; Steve knew that from personal experience.   
  
Everyone else would be waiting for them outside the building, and there would also be a legion of reporters who hadn't made the cut for access to the limited-capacity press room lying in wait outside. It would be best for everyone if Tony didn't go walking straight into that right now. He looked better than he had before Peter had approached them, but he was still pale and close to expressionless.   
  
Tony started for the front lobby, and Steve took hold of his armored elbow and pulled him back, into a recessed doorway.   
  
"Are you all right?" he asked.   
  
"I'm fine." Tony smiled at Steve, but his voice was flat, completely devoid of animation.   
  
Steve ignored this obvious lie. "I'm sorry you had that sprung on you," he said. "It wasn't an accident, was it?"   
  
Tony looked away, and even with the armor covering most of his body, Steve could see the way his shoulders went stiff. "Pepper asked... she didn't want..."   
  
Steve put a hand on Tony's shoulder. "It was an act of mercy. Don't beat yourself up over it. She wouldn't want that, either. And neither would he."   
  
"I killed him." Tony said the words very quietly, voice rough. "Without even touching him, without looking at him. I was in Stark Tower; I wasn't even in the building. I didn't even have the guts to do it in person."   
  
"The Taskmaster killed him."   
  
Under his moustache, Tony's lips twitched. It wasn't a smile. "And whose fault was that?"   
  
This wasn't the time or place to tackle that argument, particularly since Tony did have something of a point. "You know it's more complicated than that," Steve said instead. Even inside the armor, Tony looked battered and exhausted; for what was far from the first time, Steve wanted nothing so much as to make everything better. SHIELD and Stark Enterprises were Tony's responsibility, his to take care of, but this wasn't something he should have to deal with by himself.   
  
He hadn't let Steve deal with Bucky by himself, either when Steve had been newly unfrozen, or when he'd first learned that Bucky might not be dead after all.   
  
Tony nodded. "I know." He closed his eyes, and the armor broke apart, flying off his body and folding itself back into the briefcase sitting on the floor by his feet.   
  
"Why do you do that?"   
  
"Do what?" Tony asked, opening his eyes again.   
  
"Close your eyes when you use the Extremis."   
  
Tony looked faintly embarrassed, which was at least an improvement over his previous grey-faced guilt. "They turn black when I use the Extremis."   
  
"I know," Steve said.   
  
"Yes," Tony agreed, "And so do Carol, Jan, and Hank. And all of you notice, and tell me not to do it."   
  
Apparently, Tony really would never learn. "Good idea, Tony," Steve told him. "Closing your eyes is much more subtle."   
  
Tony narrowed his eyes, but before he could respond, Steve added, "We could start training blindfolded, if you want to do it during fights."   
  
"You just want another excuse to throw me to the mat." Tony grinned; apparently he enjoyed the memory of being pinned to the mat as much as Steve enjoyed the memory of pinning him.   
  
"I don't need an excuse," Steve said, feeling almost smug for a moment. That was one of the many things he was looking forward to when Tony's ribs finally healed. Maybe when they got back to New York...   
  
Tony's grin faltered after a moment, and Steve frowned. "Are you sure you're all right to go outside? There's going to be-"   
  
"Lots of reporters." Tony nodded. "I know." He offered Steve another smile, his shoulders squared. "Why do you think I took off the armor?"   
  
Steve shrugged; he'd assumed because it was heavy.   
  
"They all want pictures of Tony Stark, so let them see Tony Stark. I'm not going to hide behind it." He picked up the briefcase, and nodded in the direction of the front entrance. "Let's go celebrate our victory."   
  
"After this," Steve said, referring to the press conference, "I think we deserve to." As they turned to leave the building, the roar of noise from the crowd outside already audible, Steve settled a hand on the small of Tony's back, where his spine curved in ever-so-slightly. Tony had held his hand in front of Miriam Sharpe earlier, and not seemed to care about her disapproving eyes.   
  
Let the crowd take as many pictures as they wanted to. He wasn't going to hide, either.   


 

* * *

 

  
If you had to stand around in the middle of a pushing, shoving, shouting crowd of reporters and anti-mutant protestors, next to Ben Grimm was a good place to stand. Even the most aggressive reporters gave him at least a foot of clear space. Even better, Carol Danvers was standing on Clint's other side, and she had no problem elbowing people out of the way.   
  
There was a muffled crunch off to Clint's left, and guy with a distinct Jersey accent yelped, "Hey, you got any idea how much that camera cost?"   
  
"Jameson will buy a new one," Carol told him sweetly. "Tell him to charge it to Ms. Marvel."   
  
"Don't do that." Johnny Storm actually sounded concerned. "You know he'll blame it on Spiderman."   
  
"Thanks." Peter said, appearing out of the crowd at Johnny's elbow. He was out of costume, and was wearing sunglasses and a Mets cap.   
  
"I thought they were interviewing you," Luke Cage said. He, too, had a circle of personal space around him, invaded only by his wife and Iron Fist, who was holding their sickeningly adorable child.   
  
"They were. They finished." Peter grinned a little sheepishly. "I snuck out the back so they couldn't get any pictures of me."   
  
"Good idea," MJ's voice echoed from somewhere behind Clint's shoulder. "If they got a picture of you, they'd run another article about us with that photo of me from the Victoria's Secret catalog that no one will let me forget."   
  
Clint said nothing, just kept his mouth shut and watched the front entrance for Cap and the others. Once upon a time, he would have been right in the middle of the banter, but in the year he'd been gone, things had changed. There was an entire group of Avengers now that Clint had had no part in, and wasn't that just really goddamn weird? At least this new team they were putting together was going to be pretty much like the old one, and all people Clint knew.   
  
He just couldn't see himself on a team with Spiderman. And my God, did Parker ever shut up?   
  
There was a roar from the crowd as Sue Storm and Reed Richards emerged from the building. Reed had an arm around Sue's waist, stretching further around than even the arm of someone as lanky as Reed naturally was ought to have been able to reach. The reporters surged forward, engulfing them like a plague of locusts. Clint kept watching for Cap.   
  
It took a couple minutes before he appeared, unsurprisingly with Tony at his side. What was surprising was the hand he had resting on the small of Tony's back, and the little smile he directed at Tony before the reporters descended on them. Clint had seen the wide, goofy, know-it-all smile Cap gave his friends. This wasn't that. It was the kind of smile Clint would have given anything to get from a woman.   
  
And the hand on the back... Clint had touched Bobbi like that all the time.   
  
When exactly had Cap started being gay, and how long had he been sleeping with Tony?

 


	6. Chapter 6

Steve was abruptly jolted out of sleep by the impact on his stomach. Before he had even opened his eyes, he was shoving the foreign object off him.   
  
It made a startled "mrrip" sound, and hit the floor beside the bed with a muffled thump. There was a hiss, and he heard the sound of tiny paws skittering out of the room.   
  
Damn cat. According to Jarvis, it had begun sleeping on Tony's bed while they were gone. This was their first night back in Stark Tower, and Steve had already had to remove it from his side of the bed three times. It was getting more aggressive in its attempts to reclaim the bed, and now it had woken him up at -- Steve checked the clock -- two a.m.   
  
Steve stared at the ceiling for a few minutes before coming to the conclusion that he was not going to be falling back to sleep any time soon. Being startled awake like that had come with an accompanying burst of adrenaline, and now he was wide-awake.   
  
Tony, beside him, was still asleep, one hand resting lightly on the center of Steve's chest. The kitten's impact apparently hadn't disturbed him. His eyelashes were dark shadows against his cheekbones, and, asleep like this, the tension had finally left his face.   
  
Moving carefully, so as not to wake up Tony -- who still needed all the sleep he could get -- Steve slid out of bed, following the kitten out of the room.   
  
Maybe a glass of milk would help him get back to sleep.   
  
Despite the late hour, the light in the kitchen was still on, casting a long rectangle of yellow light out into the hallway. When he reached the kitchen door, Steve saw why; Jan was sitting at the kitchen table, a bowl of chocolate ice cream at her elbow and a glossy magazine spread open in front of her.   
  
The Avengers, current and former, had all returned from DC en mass this afternoon; the proposal to repeal the SHRA was on the Senate and House floors, but it would be at least another two weeks before it came to a vote. By this point, they had all gotten tired of DC, and Steve suspected that the Washington Court Hotel had gotten tired of them.   
  
Fury, who was now gleefully re-consolidating his hold over SHIELD, had kicked all non-SHIELD personnel off the Helicarrier. Most of the former New Avengers had gone back to Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum, and Carol, Simon, and Jessica were staying at Carol's place, while they planned their move to LA. Clint, Sam, Hank, and Jan had agreed to stay in Stark Tower for the time being, Tony's fears having proved groundless, as Steve had known they would.   
  
Jan looked up as he came into the room, frowning. "Steve. What are you doing up so late?"   
  
"I could ask you the same thing," he pointed out.   
  
She smiled wryly. "Eating chocolate ice cream and reading  _Vogue_ , obviously."   
  
"I can see that," he said. "Ah, why, exactly? I mean, at this time of night?"   
  
She raised her eyebrows. "I could ask you the same thing," she said, turning his own remark back on him.   
  
"Jarvis's kitten jumped on me. It thinks the bed belongs to it."   
  
Steve got a glass down out of one of the cabinets -- they were still stored exactly where they had been three months ago -- and opened the refrigerator door. "So," he nodded at the magazine, "what's bothering you enough to merit reading  _Vogue_ ?" Jan only read fashion magazines when she was upset about something; she claimed that mocking other people's spring or fall lines made her feel better.   
  
"I haven't slept under the same roof as Hank for months." She stirred the spoon around in her half-melted chocolate ice cream, and smiled brightly. "And hey, Clint is back. That's fantastic. I never thought the Avengers would really be a team again."   
  
Steve was wholeheartedly in agreement with that, but ignored it as the obvious attempt to change the subject that it was. "Are you still sure you want to be on the team? With Hank?" As much as  _Steve_  wanted all of them together, he didn't want to push Jan and Hank into doing something that they'd both regret.   
  
"It's not the team," Jan said. "It's us."   
  
Steve poured his milk, closed the fridge, and sat down across the table from her, nodding at her to go on.   
  
She continued, gaining speed as she went. "I'm thinking, well, we're thinking of trying to make things work again. With us. Hank wants to, and I'm starting to think that maybe I do, too."   
  
"That's good... right?" Steve tried, smiling at her. Jan and Hank had been involved with one another almost as long as Steve had known them. They loved each other. They had ended their relationship before -- broken their engagement, gotten divorced, and once, in a fit of truly uncharacteristic pettiness, Jan had slept with Clint and let Hank catch them -- but they had always gotten back together in the end.   
  
Jan shook her head. "I don't know. We've tried this before, you know, and we both made a lot of mistakes in the past. I thought that if I loved Hank enough, if he loved me enough, it would fix him. But that's not the way those things work." She stared down at the magazine, which was open to a high-gloss photograph of a too-thin woman in an ugly dress. If Steve had learned one thing in art school, it was that some colors should not be mixed, and that included olive and fuchsia.   
  
Jan look back up at him, meeting his eyes. "Don't let that happen with you and Tony," she said quietly. "Somebody ought to learn from our mistakes."   
  
So, Jan had noticed Steve touching Tony on the steps of the Capitol Building. Or possibly Tony had said something to her; either way, it was good to know that she didn't seem to object.   
  
"I put a lot of pressure on Hank to be healthy," she went on. "I thought the fact that he knew that he had a problem should be enough. I thought that if he'd just try harder..." she sighed, and let the sentence trail off. Everyone had expected Hank to try harder, after Ultron. He'd managed it sometimes, and seemed to honestly be trying now, but he'd also made some pretty spectacularly bad decisions in the past.   
  
"It's hard," Steve acknowledged. He driven himself half-crazy with frustration trying to figure out why Tony had kept drinking even though he'd known it was killing him. He knew why, now, but he still didn't understand why Tony had  _wanted_  to die. Tony was brilliant, courageous, attractive, had done so many good things for so many people, and yet he had still felt that his life was worthless. Even years later, that still made Steve angry to think about.   
  
Jan shook her head sharply, setting the ice cream spoon down with a click. "I should have tried harder, too. It sounds silly, but in a way, Hank's a little broken. And it wasn't fair of me to expect him not to be, just for me."   
  
"Hank's not broken," Steve said automatically. Hank might refer to himself as crazy, and might have been out of control a few times, but he wasn't  _broken_ .   
  
"He is," Jan said firmly. "I didn't want to admit that for so long, but he is. There's something wrong inside his head, Steve. His brain chemistry isn't right."   
  
The more she said, the less it sounded like starting things up again with Hank was a good idea. "Jan, are you sure you want to get back together with him? If it's going to make it harder for you two, being on a team together..."   
  
Jan went on as if Steve hadn't spoken, "There are times when Hank honestly can't control his emotions, and as unpleasant as that's been for the rest of us, it's worse for him. He can keep it under control with medication, but it's never going to go away, and it's not fair to expect it to. And if I love him, I can't make him handle it all alone. It would be like telling someone with a broken leg that you'll help them walk if they can stand up on their own."   
  
By Jan's definition, Steve realized, Tony probably counted as "broken," too. He'd thought something like that himself, more than once; not that Tony was broken, but that there was something damaged inside him, whatever it was that drove him to try and destroy himself.   
  
He'd spent the past month trying unsuccessfully to fix it, and worrying all the while if it was truly his place to do so. Maybe, instead of wondering if he could really do anything to help Tony, he should have been wondering why he hadn't started trying years ago.   
  
It should never have taken Steve as long as it had to recognize Tony's drinking for the suicide attempt it had been. He had given up and walked out because Tony refused to help himself, and he should never, never have done that. It was like Jan had just said, like asking someone with a broken leg to stand up.   
  
And he still didn't really know what he could do, beyond simply being there.   
  
"How do you do it?" he asked. "Keep coming back and trying when you feel so useless and he keeps not getting better?"   
  
"All I can ask of Hank is that he try, and all I can do is be there for him. I guess I just need to accept that that's enough, that it has to be enough." She smiled, laying one small hand over Steve's. "I might forget sometimes, but in the end, the good days really do make it worthwhile." She withdrew her hand, her smile turning soft, the way it sometimes did when she was thinking about Hank. "And Hank is trying this time. He's never actually gone on medication before."   
  
Jan looked back down at her now completely melted ice cream, cheeks flushing. "Sorry for venting at you like this. Usually I'd talk to Carol, or Jen, or, well, once I would have talked to Wanda." She shrugged delicate shoulders. "Failing another girl, I suppose I could have talked to Tony, but I didn't think he needed this. He has enough to deal with."   
  
Steve shook his head ruefully. "I never realized how much Tony does every day until last week," he admitted.   
  
Jan wrinkled her nose. "God, I'm glad I don't have his job." She stood and crossed the room to put her ice cream bowl in the sink, along with her spoon. "I'm going back to bed now, I think. Thanks for letting me ramble at you." She kissed Steve on the cheek and then left the room, the door swinging shut softly behind her.   
  
Steve rinsed out his empty glass and put it in the dishwasher. He was ready to go back to bed, himself.   
  
As he walked through the living room, the kitten glared at him from the back of the couch, its green eyes narrowed to slits.   
  
He approached the room soundlessly, hoping to avoid waking Tony up when he re-entered, since the kitten's attack miraculously hadn't.   
  
He pulled open the door and got the second adrenaline jolt of the night as he nearly ran headlong into Tony. He came to an abrupt halt, grabbing Tony by the arms in order to steady both of them.   
  
"I thought you were asleep," Steve blurted out, startled, as Tony blinked dazedly at him. "I almost ran-"   
  
"Steve," Tony said faintly, leaning his weight against him. "You were gone."   
  
Steve smiled; Tony was still at least partially asleep, his hair sticking up and his eyes half-focused. "I went to the kitchen to get milk and Jan waylaid me."   
  
"You were gone," Tony repeated.   
  
Yep, definitely still half-asleep. "Well, I'm back now," he said. "It's three a.m.; let's go back to bed."   
  
Tony didn't answer, staring at Steve silently, fingers digging into Steve's arms almost painfully. After a long moment he nodded, but there was something odd about his expression that Steve couldn't quite identify.   
  
Steve tugged his right arm free and pulled Tony over to edge of the bed. He sat them both down, then asked, "What is it?"   
  
"I'm fine," Tony said. His voice was firmer now, but his grip on Steve's arm didn't loosen.   
  
"Tony." Steve kept his voice quiet and even. "Are you sure you're all right?"   
  
Tony let go of Steve, standing abruptly. "I'm fine," he reiterated.   
  
Steve shook his head. Of all the words one could use to sum up Tony's mental state, "fine" was the last Steve would have chosen. He'd been under continual stress for the past several months, he blamed himself for Happy's death and the destruction of the Helicarrier, and then there was what Steve's temporary absence had done to him. Steve preferred not to think about it, but it had still had an obvious impact on Tony. And now his body language screamed "defensive," his shoulders hunched and his eyes on the floor.   
  
"No," Steve said, "you're not. Something's obviously wrong, and I thought you were going stop hiding things from me." Maybe all he could do was be there, but he couldn't even do that much if Tony wouldn't let him.   
  
"Nothing's wrong," Tony snapped, turning away from Steve and folding his arms across his chest. "Just drop it, okay?"   
  
Steve frowned. Had something else gone wrong at Stark Enterprises? He knew the board members had been less than thrilled by Tony's about-face on the SHRA; they rarely seemed pleased by anything Tony did if it had the slightest chance of causing negative publicity. And SHIELD was still in a state of chaos, with the threat of a UN investigation hanging over it. Either situation would have upset Tony, and experience had taught Steve that he wasn't likely to say anything about it. Or something could have happened in Washington... "What's going on?" he asked, honestly worried now. "They're not still going after Stark Enterprises, are they? Or is it SHIELD?"   
  
Tony half-turned to face Steve, letting his arms fall to his sides again. "SHIELD's Fury's problem again, and he's welcome to it." He made a dismissive gesture with one hand, miming throwing something away. "And Stark Enterprises is doing about as well as you could reasonably expect."   
  
"Then what the hell is it?"   
  
Tony deflated slightly, and looked away again. "You were gone," he mumbled.   
  
"What?" What had he been gone for? What was going  _on_ ? It was the middle of the night; what could possibly have happened in the half-hour since he'd left, if it wasn't a phone call from SHIELD or SE? "What am I missing? I can't do anything if you won't tell me!"   
  
Tony swung back around. "Look, do you want me to tell you how much of a mess I am?" his voice wasn't raised, but there was an intensity to it that Steve hadn't heard in weeks. "Every time I fall asleep, I dream that you're still dead, and when I wake up, if you're gone..." He trailed off, and shook his head, as if to drive away the thought. "You're back," he said, more evenly. "I have no excuse for being this weak, and it's not fair to make you put up with my problems. You didn't ask for this, and you're the one that died!"   
  
Steve took a deep breath, suddenly torn between a desire to hug Tony and remind him that he was back and everything was okay, or shake him for making Steve worry. Steve had the market cornered on stupid nightmares, especially after that first week back; if there was one thing Tony should have been certain Steve would understand, it was that. Tony had offered unquestioning support when it had been Steve waking up shaking; why would he think Steve would do any less? "And when I woke up from dreaming that I was choking on my own blood, you were there for me. Does that make me weak?"   
  
"What?" Tony looked honestly shocked, eyes widening. "No!"   
  
Steve stood, and crossed the single step toward Tony, taking him by the arms. "I made you promise me that I wouldn't have to do things alone," he said quietly. "Why do you think you have to? It's not fair to you, and it's sure as hell not fair to me." He studied Tony's face, looking for some clue that he actually got what Steve was saying. He couldn't do a damn thing if Tony deliberately shut him out; a relationship wasn't supposed to work like that.   
  
Tony stared blankly at Steve. "Of course I do. It's my problem. It's not fair to make other people suffer for my screw-ups; I've done too much of that already. Half the things I did during Registration were really just me trying to punish myself, and when I think about what I put you -- put everyone -- through because of that-"   
  
"When I told you that, I was wrong," Steve interrupted, not wanting to hear the self-recriminations that were doubtless forthcoming. A small part of him couldn't help but wonder if he'd somehow brought this on both of them with the times in the past that he'd essentially told Tony to 'get over it.' "I'm not always  _right_ ." He  _needed_  Tony to be one of the few people who didn't take everything he said as gospel just because he was Captain America; it was one of the things he'd always relied on Tony for, and where had he gotten this inexplicable idea that Steve was perfect?   
  
Tony's smile was raw and painful to look at. "Well, obviously," and Steve relaxed a little at the amused conviction in his voice, "but you were right about that, at least a little."   
  
He offered Tony a smile of his own. He didn't want to end up sitting at the table in the Avengers Mansion ten years down the road, wondering if he should try to make things with Tony work again for the third time around, because he'd let things get screwed up the first time. But as long as Tony didn't think of him as some kind of icon, they could make things work. They would make things work.   
  
Steve wrapped his arms around Tony, pulling him into a hug. This way, Steve didn't have to see the jagged edges of his smile, or the look in his eyes. Tony stiffened momentarily, before leaning against him, and Steve tightened his arms, resting his chin on Tony's shoulder. "Do you want me to wake you up before I leave from now on?"   
  
"That would be silly," Tony said, voice muffled against Steve's shoulder.   
  
"Because I'd do it," Steve went on, as if Tony hadn't spoken. He would, if it would help. It was a small thing to ask.   
  
"Thank you." Steve could hear the smile in his voice as the last of the tension Steve had been able to feel in Tony's shoulders drained out of him. He slid his arms around Steve's waist, turning his face into Steve's neck. "Thank you," he repeated. He sounded half-asleep now, and Steve could feel the curve of Tony's lips against his skin.   
  
Tony's goatee was scratching his neck, and he could feel the warmth radiating through Tony's thin t-shirt against his bare chest. Steve could handle just about anything in exchange for this. Jan was right. The good parts made the bad parts worth it.   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Clint wasn't sure he was going to be able to get used to this "living in Tony's house" thing. While the Avengers Mansion had technically also been Tony's house, it had always been the Avengers' place first and foremost. The Stark Tower penthouse... was not.   
  
For one thing, it was called Stark Tower. There was a doorman at the front door who wasn't Jarvis, who, while he had never been a doorman, had almost always answered the door back home. Cap had sworn that they were going to rebuild the Mansion, and as far as Clint was concerned, it couldn't happen soon enough. This place was a business, and it felt like it, from the slick, marble-floored lobby to the polished brass doors of the elevator, which you had to ride up for about a thousand floors in order to get to the living quarters. And even those were faintly impersonal. It was no wonder Tony used to spend half his time at the Avengers Mansion. He had horrible taste in interior design.   
  
Clint had gone out to dinner with Carol and Simon, a farewell dinner of sorts, since they were leaving for LA with Spiderwoman in two days. They'd played a couple rounds of pool, which Simon had predictably lost, and the other two had filled Clint in on some of the things he'd missed over the past year. Cap had been invited, too, but had declined to come on the grounds that the  _Bugle's_  camera people were stalking him. They weren't really, but Cap had always been twitchy about the media.   
  
It had been good to spend some down time with other Avengers again -- he'd mostly stuck close to Steve in DC -- and it was a shame they were leaving so soon.   
  
Clint stared at his distorted reflection in the elevator doors and resisted the urge to tap his foot. How long did the elevators in this place take, anyway? He'd been waiting for what felt like five minutes.   
  
It was eleven o'clock at night; you'd think all of the elevators would be free.   
  
He heard the clicking of high heels on the marble behind him before he saw the blurry shape of two people approaching in the bronze of the doors.   
  
"Clint," Jan greeted, as he turned around. "I didn't know you were out." She was wearing a dark blue dress that clung to her curves and was probably made out of silk, and was accompanied by Hank, in suit and tie.   
  
"I was out saying goodbye to Carol and Simon. You two are certainly out late." He smirked at Jan. "And that's a real nice dress for a casual dinner."   
  
Hank took his hand away from Jan's arm. "It wasn't a date," he said stiffly.   
  
"Of course it wasn't," Jan said, sounding tolerantly amused. "It was a trial run for a date. When we get to the real date, we're going dancing."   
  
Hank, who Clint knew for a fact despised dancing, smiled brilliantly. "Of course," he said. "Whatever you want."   
  
There was a muted chime as the elevator finally arrived.   
  
The ride up seemed to take twice as long as the wait, while Clint tried not to watch Hank and Jan giving each other sappy smiles. If they really wanted to get back together, that was great, and he was happy for them, and any resentment he felt was only a natural reaction to being the only single superhero left on earth.   
  
If Hank screwed things up again, or even thought about raising a hand to Jan, Clint was going to put an arrow through his stupid, scientist head. He had never been sure what Jan saw in him.   
  
The elevator finally halted, this time without a chime, and the doors opened onto the penthouse living quarters. "Home sweet home," Clint said, stepping out onto the thick, no-doubt incredibly expensive carpet. "Does it bug anyone else that there are no pictures on the walls?"   
  
"There used to be," Hank said quietly. "They're gone now."   
  
Clint nodded. Knowing Tony, they'd been giant pictures of the original Avengers, and he'd taken them down when he and Cap had temporarily lost their minds.   
  
"I'll be glad when we've got the Mansion back," Jan said. "This just isn't the same."   
  
Due to the penthouse's layout, you had to go through the living room to get to the bedrooms. The three of them rounded the corner of the fireplace into the living room, and then they all halted in unison.   
  
The television was on, the DVD player logo bouncing silently around the screen.   
  
Cap and Tony were asleep on the couch. Or rather,  _Cap_  was asleep on the couch, lying on his back with his head resting on the arm and one leg dangling off the side. Tony was asleep on Cap, his head on Cap's chest. That was only incidental, though.   
  
The truly blackmail worthy part was not that Tony was lying between Cap's legs with Cap's arm around his waist, but that Jarvis's kitten (which was a new member of the team that Clint approved of), the kitten Tony claimed to dislike, was curled up in the center of Tony's chest.   
  
Clint could hear it purring from halfway across the room.   
  
He would have given a hell of a lot for a camera right now.   
  
Jan poked Hank in the ribs and made a series of rapid hand gestures. Hank nodded, and slunk quietly across the room, disappearing into the kitchen and returning moments later with one of those cheap disposable cameras. It had to be something somebody else had left there, because Tony didn't own anything that old fashioned.   
  
Hank lifted the camera to his eye with an evil grin, and there was click and the bright flare of a flashbulb. Clint felt a sudden, unprecedented surge of affection for him.   
  
Tony opened his eyes at the flash of light, and the expression on his face was something Clint was going to treasure. He didn't make a move to dislodge the cat, though.   
  
"Do we have to get up?" Cap asked, not moving or opening his eyes.   
  
"No," Tony said, shaking his head. "I think our reputation is already irreparably damaged."   
  
Hank held up the camera, smirking. "Analog film." His voice was smug. "I think the appropriate place for these is the Internet."   
  
"Do that," Cap said, still not opening his eyes, "and Tony will kill your computer."   
  
Tony sat up, one hand flat on Cap's chest. The cat made a discontented noise and jumped down to the floor, waddling off with an offended air. "No, I'll just convince it to call him 'Daddy' every time he turns it on." From the tone of his voice, it was difficult to tell whether or not he was joking.   
  
God, Clint had missed this. When he'd first seen the news after coming back, seen the Avengers messily destroying each other while half the country turned against them, he'd thought he had no family left to come back to.   
  
"You are a sick man," Hank informed Tony.   
  
Jan grabbed him by the wrist. "Come on, honey, let's go to bed."   
  
Hank blinked, looking surprised, then grinned, and allowed Jan to haul him away.   
  
Clint stared after them. "Did they just..."   
  
"Yes," Cap said.   
  
It was petty and immature to be jealous. "Damn it, why I am the only one who's still single?"   
  
Cap opened his eyes, and gave Clint a look that was impressively serious considering that it was coming from a guy who had another guy draped on top of him. "Sam is single."   
  
"You suck."   
  
"I think Natasha's single right now," Tony offered.   
  
While Clint debated how to respond to that, Tony stood, stretching, then rubbed at the back of his neck.   
  
"The headache's back, and you're not the world's most comfortable pillow." He smiled at Cap. "I'm going to bed."   
  
Cap sat up, and reached out to put a hand on Tony's hip. "I'll be there in a few minutes," he said, smiling back.   
  
As soon as Tony was out of earshot, Cap turned to Clint, wearing what Clint had always thought of as his square-jawed leader face. "Are you going to have any problems with Hank and Jan?" he asked, in a tone of voice that implied that the answer had better be "no."   
  
"You mean, because of that time she used me to make him jealous?" Which Clint was not still--okay, he was still bitter about it. He'd thought... he had been stupid. "No," he said. "I know better than to get involved in that kind of relationship. Which makes one of us. What do you think you're doing, Steve?"   
  
Cap frowned. "Inviting them both onto the team because they're my friends?"   
  
He'd forgotten how good Cap was at playing dumb. "You and Tony," Clint said, folding his arms across his chest. Cap opened his mouth to speak, but Clint overrode him. He'd been meaning to say this for almost a week now, since he'd seen them both smiling sappily at one another on the steps of the Capitol Building, and he was going to say his piece. "How long have you been sleeping with him, exactly? Why are you sleeping with him? In what universe is that not a bad idea?"   
  
Cap shrugged, and rubbed at the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable. "I'd just come back, and he was a mess, and..." he trailed off, then said, "Look, it just... happened."   
  
Oh, Christ, of all the ways for Cap to have ended up in Tony's bed, that was possibly the worst. Clint had spent almost as much time as Tony's teammate as he had with Cap, and he knew that, ten to one, Tony had been completely crazy at that point. Clint had seen footage of the funeral on television; the European channels had been really fond of that clip of Tony breaking down in tears. Not all of Clint's relationships had been brilliant, but at least he could recognize emotionally unhealthy sex when he saw it. "You're Captain America, you're supposed to have all kinds of self-control, and  _it just happened?_ What, did you trip and fall on his-"   
  
"Clint!"   
  
"No, you're right," Clint snapped. "With Tony, it would probably be the other way around."   
  
Cap folded his arms over his chest and glared in a way that was probably calculated to remind Clint that he was very tall. It wasn't going to work this time. "You don't have a problem with this because we're both men, do you?" he asked.   
  
"No," Clint said. "I just want to make sure you know what you're doing." He'd been there on the West Coast when Tony had been trying to put himself together after the drinking. Cap hadn't. Tony had tried to put a good face on things, but it had been screamingly obvious what a wreck he was, even without the couple of times he'd let Rhodey use him as a punching bag -- which Cap probably also didn't know about, since Rhodey's nose remained unbroken. "You've always wanted to see the best in Tony, and that's not a bad thing, but the guy's a mess. You can't walk into that blind; you're just going to make yourself miserable, and you don't deserve that. I just want to be sure you know what you're getting into."   
  
Cap uncrossed his arms, the disapproving look fading from his face. "Actually, I think I do." He smiled a little. "I'm not walking into this blind, and anyway, it's my decision to make."   
  
Well, Clint decided, seeing the familiar stubborn determination in the set of Cap's jaw, it wasn't the best decision his friend had ever made, but if this was what Cap really wanted, nothing and nobody was going to make him change his mind. And as long as he was happy and not dead, Clint was happy, too. "Yeah, okay, okay," Clint said, waving a hand dismissively. "I don't have to date Stark too to rejoin this team, right? Because that's not really my thing." He raised his eyebrows at Cap. "How's that working out for you, anyway? I mean, which of you-"   
  
"Your interest in my sex life is truly disturbing," Cap interrupted.   
  
Clint didn't actually want to know at went on between the two of them, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up; Cap could barely talk about sex without turning right red. In fact, his ears were already starting to go pink. "But how will I live vicariously through your sex life if you don't tell me about it?" He faked a plaintive tone of voice.   
  
Cap smirked. "That's the idea."   
  
"It's not fair," Clint informed him. "I didn't even know you liked guys. If you did like guys before and this isn't something else new... " he trailed off, shaking his head. "Why is everything different?" That had come out sounding much whinier than he'd meant it to.   
  
"I never said I didn't like men," Cap pointed out, as if this completely excused him of the responsibility to tell Clint extremely important things about his personal life. Like revealing that he was attracted to men before he let Clint strip naked and change into his costume in front of him. Repeatedly.   
  
"You never said you did," Clint said, "and now you're sleeping with Tony, and Hank's on medication, and Carol's doing this weird threesome thing with Simon and Spiderwoman," and now that he'd started listing things, he couldn't shut up, "and she and Simon are leaving, and the Mansion is gone, and Cassie's all grown up and playing superhero, and there are all these people I barely even know who call themselves Avengers now-"   
  
"Clint," Cap interrupted, holding up a hand, "it's okay."   
  
"I was only gone for a year, and now everything's different." It hadn't seemed like any time at all to him, but it had taken him a while to get back home, and everybody else had moved on. Half the population seemed to hate superheroes now, and all of his friends had lost their minds and fought a giant, pointless war with each other, and now half of them were barely talking to the other half. Clint had spent the past two weeks feeling like he was continually playing catch-up, like he was in the middle of a performance he'd missed all the rehearsals for.   
  
"Try being gone for fifty years," Cap said, smiling a little. Clint had the irritating suspicion that he was amused by all of this.   
  
"How did you do it?" he asked, again sounding whinier than he'd meant to.   
  
"I was lucky. I 'died' by myself and woke up with a family." Cap grinned that big, goofy-looking grin. "Things were hard at first, but I was lucky this time around, too. Trust me, it will get easier, and not everything has changed for the worse."   
  
"Yeah, except that you've changed into a giant girl," Clint said. Cap had said that last bit with the fond expression he sometimes got when talking about Tony. Actually, wait, he'd always been a giant girl.   
  
Cap blinked at him, looking mildly offended. "What? I was talking about rebuilding the Mansion. Tony wasn't ready to do that before."   
  
"Right. Whatever. And speaking of new things, why is there jailbait running around in my costume?"   
  
Cap shook his head, and started for the door. "Good night, Clint," he said over his shoulder.   
  
"She stole my codename, too," Clint called after him. "How could you let her do that?"   
  
"Good night, Clint."   
  
Okay, so not everything had changed. Cap was still an annoying bastard.   


 

* * *

 

  
The Avengers had only been a team once more for about two days, but word had apparently already gotten out, and even if Miriam Sharpe and a great many people who shared her concerns were vocally unhappy, the New York City Police Department seemed very happy indeed.   
  
Particularly right now, since, to quote the officer who had just frantically called Stark Tower, "two dozen monsters covered in black oil" were attacking downtown Manhattan, and "get this, they smell like cotton candy. And I think they used to be people."   
  
"So, let me see if I understand this right," Sam said. "They're covered in some sort of evil mind-control goo?"   
  
The six of them were gathered in the living room, already in costume -- except for Hank, who was in street clothes -- getting the rundown from Steve, even though Tony was the one who had taken the call. That part of team leadership had always been Steve's job, anyway, and Tony had had more than enough of giving orders while he was running SHIELD.   
  
"Actually," Hank said, before Steve could respond, "if this is really related to the symbiote that created Venom and Carnage, it's not so much mind-control as-" he broke off as he realized that everyone was staring at him, with vary degrees of irritation and amusement. "Just bring me back a sample, okay?" he finished.   
  
"Sure thing, sweetheart. Just don't clone more of it," Jan said, from where she was perched on Hank's shoulder, amused affection clear even though she was only six inches tall. Clint was also amused, but in a less affectionate manner. He was standing on Steve's right, and Tony, from his position on Steve's left, could just see his folded arms and bored slouch out of the corner of his eye.    
  
Sam shook his head, and Tony could almost see him wondering what he'd gotten himself into. Redwing, perched on his shoulder, continued to ignore them all, far more concerned with Jarvis's kitten, which was currently hiding behind Tony's ankle, glaring balefully at Redwing. Redwing was eyeing it speculatively, obviously thinking about lunch.   
  
Tony stayed silent, watching the byplay and quietly running diagnostics on his armor, monitoring them through the Extremis, since he hadn't put his helmet on yet. He hadn't really worn it since his battle with the Mandarin, and it had taken a serious beating then. Luckily, the repairs had been successful, and everything was checking out all right. He ran the diagnostic one more time, just to be sure. The kitten twined around his ankles, apparently intent on being stepped on. Tony stood very still, doing his best to ignore it.   
  
Steve took a step forward, adjusting one of the straps on his shield, an unconscious gesture that Tony was intimately familiar with. "No one's cloning anything," he said firmly. Steve always looked good in costume, if only because it emphasized how tall and broad-shouldered he was.   
  
Tony hadn't meant to burden him with all of his stupid problems, especially not the nightmares; it wasn't Steve's fault that he had trouble sleeping. But Steve, true to his nature, hadn't even seemed to mind.   
  
He had even turned down the offer to attend Carol and Simon's farewell party, probably because he'd known that Tony hadn't really had the energy for it. Instead, they'd stayed in and watched classic movies, and, unsurprisingly, with Steve there, he had slept just fine. Even if it had been sprawled on the couch where everyone had been able to walk right in on them. He still hadn't found where Hank had hidden the camera.   
  
Tony pulled himself out of his reverie to find that he'd apparently missed some comment of Hank's, which Clint was now mocking.   
  
"Sure thing, Dr. Jekyll," Clint was saying.   
  
"Play nice, boys," Jan said, in the dulcet tone that meant someone was about to be stung.   
  
Steve ignored them all with the ease of long practice. "Let's go, folks. The longer we wait, the more of these things we'll have to fight."   
  
"Redwing and I have been ready to go for ten minutes."   
  
Tony turned and smiled at Steve -- it felt so good to be doing this again. This was how things were supposed to be. "Aren't you forgetting something?" he asked, trying for playfulness. He thought he might even have succeeded. "I thought we were going to do things right this time."   
  
Steve grinned back at him, that smile of his that could light up a room. "All right, all right." He raised his shield. "Avengers Assemble!"


End file.
